Surprised by Hope Class Updates

The Sunday after Labor Day, Husband and I started a class at church on Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright. I had read this back in May to prepare. Since then, we have facilitated 7 sessions. Where are we now?

The Pick

We chose Surprised by Hope because its topic was a natural progression from the development of the modern self that we had led during the previous academic year. Thomas Schreiner (Southern Baptist by affiliation) of 9Marks has a fairly balanced summary and critique of the book, most of which I agree with. Based on this summary, are you curious to read the book?

What is heaven after all? Wright contends that too many Christians have a Platonic idea of heaven. They conceive of it in ethereal terms, as if we float in a bodiless state in some transcendent realm. Indeed, most Christians think of heaven as “up there,” and as separated from the earth. What the Scriptures teach, however, is that heaven will come to earth. The Scriptures do not say, according to Wright, that we will “go to heaven when we die,” but that heaven will come to earth, that the earth upon which we live will be transformed, and that we will enjoy the new creation.

The Plan

As I understand it, the class was planned to span at least one full semester, potentially the entire school year (our church does not hold Sunday school in summer/4th quarter). The book has 15 chapters, although chapters 3 and 4 hold the most "meat" by far. We deliberately avoided making a syllabus right away because we didn't know how much time the attendees would want to take grappling with the deeper content.

Here's the Table of Contents:

Part 1 - Setting the Scene

1. All Dressed Up and No Place to Go? (confusion about what Christianity means by the Resurrection)
2. Puzzled About Paradise? (confusion about heaven and the afterlife)
3. Early Christian Hope in its Historical Setting
4. The Strange Story of Easter (chapters 3 and 4 are a condensation of one of Wright's 800-page books)

Part 2 - God's Future Plan

        5. Cosmic Future: Progress or Despair?

        6. What the Whole World's Waiting For

        7. Jesus, Heaven, and New Creation

        8. When He Appears

        9. Jesus the Coming Judge

        10. The Redemption of our Bodies

        11. Purgatory, Paradise, Hell

Part 3 - Hope in Practice: Resurrection and the Mission of the Church

        12. Rethinking Salvation: Heaven, Earth, and the Kingdom of God

        13. Building for the Kingdom

        14. Reshaping the Church for Mission: Biblical Roots

        15. Reshaping the Church for Mission: Living the Future

Based on past experiences facilitating a discussion-based class on Carl Trueman's Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, we anticipated a mix of perspectives and easily whetted appetites. So, the entire book likely will take the full 3 quarters, which we are happy about.

The People

Our church is fairly small (~80 members, ~110 regular attendees), and out of those we had 10-15 people sign up for the class, which is being offered at the same time as a differently-themed class. Each has one of the priests in semi-regular attendance as a participant.

Anglicanism, specifically the ACNA, is truly a melting pot (tossed salad?) of people who have grown up or spent time in other Christian traditions, and combining that with the three-streams aspect of the larger Anglican tradition, the result is extreme diversity within a unifying mindset. In the group, so far we have seen a range of perspectives on topics such as

• What the fact of inspiration of Scripture really means (simple to complex)
• Willingness to engage in the historical context behind the text
• (Mathematical/Christian) Platonism and Aristotelianism
• Pietism and implications for practice of one's faith and witness

The first and second Sundays on which we engaged in chapter 3 had an unexpectedly high number of asides. Neither of us were prepared for a comment on inspiration which sparked an animated discussion lasting about a third of class time--I was glad to be able to gently correct one or two false dichotomies.

The Progress

As expected, there has been a lot of robust discussion, varied reaction, and between-session thought about the topics! Next week, we may take a deliberate aside to engage with some of the core Scripture passages that Wright has referenced and will reference in the following chapters (including John 14:2 and 1 Corinthians 15), to ensure that (1) we all know where he's coming from, (2) we're exposed to the Greek text with key terms, and (3) we're all looking at the text roughly the same way (even if we disagree with what it's saying, we should still know what it meant for its original intended audience). Additionally, we might take a closer look at 2 Maccabees 7 which may have been what the Sadducees were thinking of when they challenged Jesus.

Major Topics

I didn't take notes on chapter 1, but as far as major topics go I think the summary excerpt from 9Marks nicely captures it. Otherwise . . .

• Hymns do teach theology.
• People's lack of attention to the words they sing does not invalidate this general point.
• Yes, hymns are expressed as poetry, and should be interpreted as such.
• No, not all lyrics are the same.
• Two hymns that express resurrection theology very closely to the Scriptural view are For All the Saints and Jerusalem the Golden.
• Bodily resurrection is a core belief of Christianity.
• Only Jews, Christians, and (after 800s AD) Zoroastrians believed in a post-death body.
• We've gotten through 3 of 7 mutations that Christians made to the Jewish doctrine of life-after-death.
• Mutation #1: early Christianity, unlike Judaism, had a single view of life after death
• Mutation #2: early Christianity, unlike Judaism, treated bodily resurrection as a central belief on which other beliefs hang
• Mutation #3: early Christianity explained the resurrection body clearly and emphaticaly as both physical, and transformed, and Spirit-powered (against a common mistranslation of 1 Corinthians 15:44)
• Irenaeus articulated this view in AD 180.
• Physical bodies of resurrected people mean that this creation matters (2 Corinthians 6:14)
• Political implications of this can be explored in (among other places) Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, followed by One Faith No Longer.
• Eyewitness accounts are important to the Gospels' texts.
• If multiple people witnessed an event, their accounts are expected to diverge, potentially in many details.
• At the same time, core details' agreement across accounts roughly reflect the degree of certainty we can take in knowing what happened.
• These accounts typically undergirded ancient biography as a genre, which took a very different approach from contemporary biography (which resolves many of the apparent differences in the Gospels). Around the same time, Thucidydes described how he "recorded" speeches based on interviews.

Interesting Asides

Some unanticipated side topics have included

• Inspiration of Scripture
• How do we know about it? Do we just "feel" that the whole corpus of Scripture is inspired?
• What does this mean? Did God dictate the words to all biblical writers (closer to Islam's view) or did He more so inspire the thoughts that the human writers put their best-at-the-time words to? (Check out Paul's side note in 1 Corinthians 1:16.)
• Is it more important to believe in the inspiration of Scripture before or after one believes in Jesus Christ as Savior?
• John 1 and 19 were likely written especially to combat docetism (proto-Gnosticism)
• Jesus' divinity
• Not the same as messiahship!
• At least to the peoples at the time, not shown by His resurrection necessarily, but by other evidence
• Hermeneutical methods
• One way is rectilinear--i.e., that for each Old Testament prophecy there is exactly one fulfillment of that prophecy (either "now" or "not yet" but not both). This was embraced by many of the Reformers because it was opposite of what the Roman Catholic church taught at that time.
• Another way is typological--i.e., for a given OT prophecy there are multiple possible fulfillments (both "now" and "not yet").

Stay tuned for further integration of the content in the posts ahead!

Seasonal Affective . . . Music?

Although I love many things about fall, one thing I don't like so much about it is the seasonal affective symptoms . . . depressed mood, slow thinking, slow movement, and sedentary behavior. What do I do to prevent and manage these without medication?

Outside/Daytime

Child and I are well on our way to 600+ hours outside this year. Besides walking (the more the merrier) and playground time, I bring a book along that I can read with one hand without a glove. That won't work once temperatures drop below around 35 degrees, but so far that strategy has allowed me to get a good amount of intellectual stimulation in along with my endogenously produced vitamin D. (Once I can't guarantee the 10-20 minutes/day of sunlight on my face and arms, I'll supplement through dietary means.)

Walking, in general, is my best tip for outdoors, since Husband prefers the treadmill indoors. For adults, the most benefits tend to be seen starting around 4,000-6,000 steps per day; toddlers take around 17,000 steps per day. I can sustain 5,000-10,000 steps per day between restless legs (if <5k) or trochanteric bursitis (if >10k).

Inside

Reading

I would be remiss if I omitted reading from my SAD strategy. Usually, I can gauge my energy levels by the amount of time it takes me to get through a relatively dense book that is not for work. Material that is somewhat challenging, yet related to one of my interests, helps to remind me that life is indeed worth plowing through. See the image above for my birthday book haul that I'll probably get through 2 falls from now!

Homemaking

Another major way in which I combat negative mood symptoms is by cleaning, and specifically, decluttering. Last year, I discovered The Minimal Mom's channel and have gravitated toward implementing Dawn's strategies more than the seasonal decorating tips one sees in other channels I watch or listen to. Getting rid of clutter and making things look physically neater and more functional gives me an instant boost of dopamine.

Nighttime

Nights are the most difficult part of seasonal affective disorder for me, since my pineal gland decided that sleep maintenance insomnia was the best solution to raising Child while working full time (50% outside the home). My most sleep-deprived times tend to be early in each semester, and nights before days when I need prolonged alertness.

Over years of crafting a bedtime routine that works reasonably well for me, here's what I've found:

• I'm very thankful that my body so rarely needs caffeine (1 weak cup of green tea ~2-3x/year)
• The 3-2-1 routine, even if it doesn't result in enough sleep, does seem to help with the daytime energy: stop working 3 hours before bed, stop fluid intake 2 hours before bed, stop screen time 1 hour before bed.
• Morning and afternoon sunlight, at consistent times if possible, helps me wake up if I'm sleepy due to lack of sleep. I haven't seen a strong correlation with sleep quantity the night after.
• Getting all of my to-do list, plus a bit of the next day's, done for the day, even if it takes my work hours later than I'd like, does help the hardest aspect of sleep maintenance insomnia--anxious thoughts in the 1-3am window.
• White noise differs between Husband and myself--he prefers baroque instrumental music and Latin chants, while I tend to prefer rain noise, although his cue is starting to work for me after my 4-hour stint of sleep.

An Aside on Music

Husband and I have had many conversations lately about music, mainly because we've become involved in leading music during church services, and secondarily because his sleep cue music is so different from mine. In a theological context, we generally find older music more edifying because the musical quality tends to please our ears more (and be more singable for men) and the theology-in-poetry tends to be less problematic.

What do I mean by "old"? 

• Pre-Enlightenment (1688-1789) versus post-Enlightenment hymns are marked by theological shifts, including non-Platonist to Platonist/Epicurean
• N. T. Wright recommends choosing complete hymns that tell the biblical story, not necessarily one very narrow aspect of it. Husband referenced a video wherein Wright stated that his preference would be for each Eucharistic service to have at most one hymn or song from any one 15-year period.

What do I mean by "singable"?

• Straightforward, sturdy tune
• Composed to be sung by a group of relatively untrained laypersons, not performed by a single person. The intent is important!
• Musical range is narrow enough and low enough for both men and women. Most people can comfortably sing in a 2-octave range at the most--men tend to be baritones (G 2 octaves below middle C through E above middle C), and women tend to be mezzo-sopranos (A below middle C through F 2 octaves above middle C).

Why is this important? Short answer: hymns teach theology, other opinions to the contrary. I'm looking very much forward to getting a book soon, written by a friend and past teacher, that dives into the soul-shepherding aspect of church music.

The bottom line for me is that music is a balm for my soul and Husband's soul, on the days and in the seasons when we're the most gloomy. 

What are your best tips for managing seasonal depression?

(Im)migration and In/Out Groups

Due to timing of publication around Columbus Day, this week's post incorporates some not-quite-personal experience--that of my grandparents--because of the topic of immigration to the United States. Here, I hope to expand on some topics from recent posts, specifically about migration, in-groups, out-groups, and implications for Christianity.

Migration and United States History

One physical function that humans (among other creatures) are built to do is to move around from place to place, and when those places are far "enough" apart this is called migration, from Latin migrare, "to move". When one adds a Latin prefix or suffix, one obtains emigration (ex + migrare), "to move out," and immigration (in + migrare), "to move in." This refers to leaving one's country or region of origin to move to a different-enough country or region.

People groups that have moved into the United States at various time points likely included

• North Siberians and East Asians via a land bridge that has since eroded
• Clovis people who passed into what is now New Mexico from the south
• These two large groups formed a number of Native American tribes
• Northern Europeans Leif Erikson and crew
• Western Europeans Christopher Columbus and crew (Columbus miscalculated the circumference of the earth and so misinterpreted the quickest direction of travel and his destination; Greeks centuries before him were much closer to the mark)
• In recent decades, immigrants form approximately 40 million (13-14%) of the current US population, about a quarter of those being unauthorized for various reasons. Top countries of origin include Mexico, China, India, the Philippines, and El Salvador. Most immigrants live around the borders of the US or in Chicago.

So, the phenomenon of people immigrating to the US is nothing new. Laws and regulations around immigration have changed in various countries, as have the proportions and reasons people have moved.

Takes on Columbus Day

Suffice it to say, Columbus Day is a hot-button topic these days. A few decades ago (hard to tell exactly when), some people started to advocate for renaming/replacing/refocusing the holiday to Indigenous Peoples' Day. This day became federally recognized in 2021. As I've seen from recent social media posts, people tend to dichotomize this issue, like many other issues, fitting neatly into the in- and out-group discussion immediately following in this post.

People Groups in Sociology

Sociology is an academic discipline that studies human group behavior in society, which influences much of human behavior at various levels (family group, neighborhood, city, state, etc.). A sociological concept undergirding the book I reviewed last week is that of in-groups versus out-groups.

In-Groups

An in-group is a grouping of people that I feel I am a member of, for one reason or another. Examples of in-groups for me include conservative Anglicans, homeschool alumni/ae, mothers, geriatric physical therapists, and political moderates. One tends to be more loyal toward and tolerant of people in one's own in-group(s).

Out-Groups

An out-group is the opposite of an in-group. Examples of my out-groups include theologically liberal Christians, child-free people, political hyper-conservatives, and political hyper-liberals. One tends to be less loyal toward and less tolerant of people in one's out-group(s). (Complicating this for me is my sensitivity toward noticing the Dunning-Kruger effect almost everywhere, since that is a key concept I incorporate in many courses I teach.)

Implications for Christianity

Beyond counter-perspectives on immigration reform from conservative and progressive Evangelicals (see last week's post), implications for Christian faith and practice of in-groups, out-groups, and (im)migration run deep.

Orthodox vs Heterodox Doctrine

There's a lot more to be said elsewhere about what is truly orthodox and what is truly heterodox doctrine in Christianity. However, a few key questions to ask yourself to make this determination can include these:

• Does the teaching cohere with the whole counsel of the canonical Scriptures in the literal sense (sensus literalis, not literalism)
• Does the teaching adhere to the 3 ecumenical creeds of the Christian Church, as they were originally intended to be interpreted by those who drafted them?
• Does the teaching match or approximate the practice/belief of the early Church as recorded in sources from the time?

Baptism and Circumcision

I've written a fair amount this year and in past years on what Baptism means for the Christian. I adhere to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which immediately (and unfortunately) puts me in the out-group of many Christian groups. Here, I want to explore the concepts of Baptism, circumcision, faith, and covenant, with a little help from one of my recent favorite scholars, N. T. Wright. Summary:

• Covenant in Israel signified by circumcision and kept (you're living in covenant) by keeping works of Torah
• Covenant in Christianity signified by baptism and kept by faith-based (trusting) living on earth in Christ Jesus

Let's dive a little deeper. Wright wrote a 2005 essay on creation and covenant (contained in one of his longer books on Paul) in which he argues that

• Concepts of God's creation and God's covenant go together by parallel functions (especially in Psalm 19, 74)
• God's covenant to His people is meant to undo the effects of the Fall, and creation is meant to solve problems in the covenant, explored especially in Isaiah 40-55
• Paul draws on these and other passages to support his narrative of God's-story especially in Colossians 1:15-20, 1 Corinthians 15, and Romans 1-11
• In the New Perspective on Paul, a key point is that Gentile inclusion in the covenant is part and parcel of forgiveness of sins (people vs individual)

In the same year, Reformed scholar/Presbyterian minister-professor J. V. Fesko, among others, wrote about Wright's perspective on what signifies the covenant in Old and New Testaments.

• For OT and first-century Jews, boundary markers--signs that one was within God's covenant--were "circumcision, kosher food laws, and Sabbath observance" (p. 30). As such, (male) circumcision marked those who were in covenant.
• Once Christ inaugurated the new covenant, faith in Christ replaced circumcision--if one was baptized (male or female, infant or adult), they were in the covenant and stayed in the covenant. Fesko argues from Colossians 2:11-12 that baptism, "not faith in Christ," is the sign of the new covenant.
• In examining the key baptismal-regeneration text of 1 Peter 3:20-21, Fesko appears to separate baptism (the outward act) from faith (the inward grace). This is typical of the perspective of those who deny baptismal regeneration.

However, I believe Fesko misunderstands Wright. Wright, a conservative Anglican, takes the view (as do I) that baptism is not man's work but God's work (humans having the physical hands that baptize because God the Father does not have physical hands or body)--or, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, "the outward sign of an inward grace."

Immigrants and Politics

What does all of this tell the thinking Christian about the best way(s) to think about and approach the concept of immigration in a politicized, dichotomized context? I'll play teacher here and give you some brainstorm questions/suggestions . . .

• What is your relationship to the family of God?
• How do you become a child of God?
• Name at least 3 other options besides the 2 polar opposites that you are given.
• Given that God will renew the creation and resurrect us bodily as He did Jesus, what does that say about how we steward the people and things of this creation?

One Faith No Longer: Philosophical Review

Over the weekend, I finished George Yancey's and Ashlee Quosigk's One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America (2021). This week, I will overview the broad theological and philosophical ideas involved in the book, and next week I will dive into one of the sub-topics mentioned but not further developed in one of the chapters.

Executive Summary

I'm going to combine the traditional format of a précis with my PhD-related slant and expand on the summary of this book before I dive into more of the granular issues.

Researchers (Authors)

At the start, we learn only that Yancey and Quosigk are Evangelicals. In the Conclusion and methodological appendix, we learn a bit more that Yancey has been in the Southern Baptist Convention for most of his life, while Quosigk has been in various non-liturgical denominations and has lately been gravitating more toward progressive Evangelicalism. Both are academics in the field of sociology. 

Methods and Sample

Mixed methods undergirded the research (resource here describing good-quality mixed-methods approaches from the National Institutes of Health). All data sources focused on Evangelicals in the present-day US. Quantitative—numerical—data came from the 2012 American National Election Survey (ANES), while qualitative—descriptive—data came from individual interviews with Evangelicals and blog posts from Evangelical-leaning Protestants. Research questions broadly addressed definitions of Conservative Evangelical and Progressive Evangelical “in” and “out” groups, including Muslims and both major political parties. The sample was reported as “almost” entirely Evangelical, with analysis interchanging the terms “Evangelical” and “Christian” throughout the book. 

Results

Most succinctly, results were dichotomous:

• "Conservative Christians" (literalist Evangelicals) are doctrinally rigid, socially diverse, and politically flexible
• Progressive Evangelicals are doctrinally flexible, postmodernist, and mostly politically united.

Theological Notes

Some of my comments here may overlap with those in the next section. Theology and philosophy as fields of study are, after all, related. Here, I want to address, in more detail, Evangelicalism in terms of the sample and its representativeness of US Christianity as a whole, the face validity of the ANES question used in subdividing the sample, and political-theological connections.

Evangelicalism and Jonathan Edwards

I've mentioned Evangelicalism as a movement in a few posts (about falls, justification, and classical education). Yancey and Quosigk identified Darwinism and contemporaneous scientific innovations as a main impetus for Protestant fundamentalism in the USA. Before that, however, they define "traditional" (applied to Evangelicals more narrowly and Christians more broadly) as holding "views broadly aligning with those of Jonathan Edwards, the highly influential eighteenth-century American revivalist preacher who lived and worked during US Christianity's earliest years" (p. 245, note 1 on introduction).

From the time of early fundamentalism, the early- to mid-1900s were relatively peaceful because fundamentalists were nowhere as involved in politics as modernists, so the two groups could ignore each other for the most part. In the 1970s, the Evangelical Left formed, leading today to two separate religions of progressive Christianity and conservative Evangelicalism.

One example of the current progressive-conservative conflict that I found interesting centered on the contemporary hymn "In Christ Alone" by Keith and Kristyn Getty. Husband and I actually had this as part of our wedding service, so we agree that it's a good-quality hymn. The theology of this hymn is Calvinist (since Edwards was in the Calvinist branch of the Protestant tradition); therefore it emphasized penal substitution in the lines

Till on the cross, as Jesus died,

The wrath of God was satisfied.

The Presbyterian Church-USA is a more liberal/progressive branch off of the older Presbyterian Church in America (the split occurred in 1983, a few years before a similar split happened in the Lutheran Church between LCMS and ELCA, in 1988). Shortly after the hymn was published, the PCUSA asked the Gettys for permission to change the second line referenced to The love of God was magnified. 

Since penal substitution is considered by many Evangelicals and Reformed churches (who tend to follow Calvin's thought) to be the correct theory of atonement, there was understandable backlash. As someone who thinks that Christus victor has more merit than penal substitution, I don't see as big of an issue as others did.

Core Doctrines of Christianity

I've written elsewhere about theological triage, i.e., determining which doctrines are core (first-rank), which are almost-core (second- and/or third-rank, depending on your classification system), and which are adiaphora (third- or fourth-rank). To define what one must believe in order to be a Christian, I lean heavily toward what is in the Apostles' Creed. That said, faith-as-trust, normally formed in someone in Baptism (see the Nicene Creed which was formulated a bit later), places one in the family of Christ, and thereafter the individual grows in knowledge of the faith-as-propositions.

Based on the Creed according to its original intent, several core doctrines could be formulated thus:

• God the Father--created the world and heaven by means unspecified.
• God the Son--fully human, fully God, died and was buried after crucifixion (humiliation), rose bodily and continues to live in this renewed body, and rules over creation equal with the Father
• God the Holy Spirit--fills the universal Church which is set apart to God
• Bodily resurrection which will be followed by eternal life in the new creation

In the Nicene Creed, additional doctrines were clarified as needed due to the distance of time from the first generation of Christians. These include:

• Increased emphasis on the divine nature and eternal existence of Jesus Christ
• Clarification that the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father and God the Son, inspired the prophets, and is worshipped co-equally with the other Persons
• Baptism--one-time, forgives sins (part of baptismal regeneration)
• New creation--we will live on a renewed earth after our bodies are resurrected

Given this, I found two points in the book particularly troublesome. First, on p. 195 the authors claim that "some Christians baptize and others do not." This statement, as noted in the Creed above, is false. All Christians baptize Christians-to-be in the name of the triune God. Non-Christians do not perform a valid Christian baptism.

Second, I found it sad, but not surprising, that progressive Evangelicals (per interviews) are not comfortable with the term "Christian" applied to themselves as a sole descriptor. At the same time, they think that their interpretation of the Scriptures represents a true(r) Christianity in terms of following Jesus' teaching. Given ample description across several chapters of the book, I see a clear Jesus-in-one's-own-image, not the historical Jesus, due to over-emphasis on social justice (which does deserve emphasis) in the context of postmodernism-that-makes-language-fluid.

What About Other American Christians?

As you may have gathered, I do not like that Yancey and Quisogk freely interchange the terms "Evangelical" and "Christian." A distinct subset of a set does not represent the entire diverse set. While Evangelicalism does represent a numerically large subset of American Christianity, doctrines are distinct from several other major branches...

• Evangelical/Protestant (141 million)
• Southern Baptists--16 million
• United Methodist--7.6 million (splitting)
• National Baptist Convention--5 million
• ELCA--4.1 million
• Additional: Episcopal
• Roman Catholic (51 million)
• Eastern Orthodox (6 million)

I contend that liturgical non-Swiss-Reformation Protestants (e.g., WELS, LCMS, ACNA) are almost always ignored in sociological research. To this point, I agree with p. x: "It is vital to ask the question 'what type of Christian are we talking about?' before we so freely use 'Christian' as an adjective."

Philosophical Notes

This section will be briefer, at least until I have opportunity to update this post. The main point I will highlight in each subsection is the overuse of dichotomies even by those who eschew them (progressives and the researchers themselves). Husband said that Germans and those who are in the German school of philosophy are especially fond of dichotomies, especially after Hegel. 

Metaphysics

Metaphysics speaks to the nature of reality and the relationship between mind and matter. According to these sources, progressive Christians don't like metaphysics in general. The older (2008) source noted that progressive Christianity as a concept emerged in the mid-1990s. Progressives tend to go along with the wider culture in terms of their dislike of metaphysics, but this point is unfortunately not explored in more depth.

I found the 2022 source on 5 "points" of progressive theology interesting. What are these points?

1. Focus more on Jesus' life and teaching (content of the Gospels) more than His death and resurrection (final chapters of the Gospels)
2. Include all people of differing viewpoints, regardless of scriptural support of adiaphorical nature of such differences (but don't include conservatives)
3. Focus on social justice as a means to bring peace
4. Steward the earth and don't automatically mistrust contemporary science (a sub-claim is that Scripture is not entirely divinely inspired--this deserves a separate post)
5. Ask questions and de-prioritize absolutes--this is consistent with postmodernism in which progressivism fits neatly

Ontology

Ontology, by most definitions, speaks to the nature of being. What does it mean to exist? Not a lot of the book deals directly with this subject, but I appreciated pp. 9-10 to the effect of establishing the importance of the research questions. 

First, authors note that religion, broadly speaking, is a way of answering the questions of meaning in our lives, including whether we have a larger purpose and, if so, what that is. On the next page, authors correctly note that different religions' answers to those questions of meaning and being "are often mutually exclusive." (That should make your ears perk up if you agree with the progressive position of many paths leading to the same good destination.)

Epistemology

This is one of Husband's favorite philosophical topics: the nature of knowledge and how it is gained. The book is sprinkled with epistemological overtones and understatements, about the points such as:

1. Many Christians don't know what they need to know. (Therefore: apologetics and catechesis!)
1. Quote from p. 27: "According to Alisa [Childers], the references to scripture, the familiar lingo, and nods to a conservative Christian culture are enough to keep many conservatives from becoming defensive and uneasy."
2. A quote from a progressive website started a chapter (p. 207): "The difference between me and you is you use scripture to determine what love means and I use love to determine what scripture means."
1. This should prompt us to go beyond a simple dichotomy. More on that in future posts.
3. In the quantitative analysis of ANES data, authors utilized a single question to dichotomize their participants.
1. "Conservative" Christians were ones who answered that the Bible is entirely the literal word of God.
2. "Progressive" Christians were ones who answered either that (1) the Bible is the word of God but not 100% literal or (2) the Bible is not God's word and not literal. This is problematic, as it lumps orthodox-but-not-literalist Christians in with those who proclaim heresy (i.e., progressive Evangelicals).
4. The blog posts' findings were multi-faceted:
1. All individuals, conservative and progressive, publicly disagreed with their in-groups' stance.
2. Conservative bloggers directly challenged political policies and practices while maintaining doctrinal rigidity.
3. Progressives didn't challenge others politically but play to ethics/values.

Recommended Reading

Despite the problematic things I noted above, I highly recommend that you read this book if you are interested in evangelical Christianity within present-day US. Additional reads, if you read One Faith No Longer, include:

• Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (C. R. Trueman) on postmodernism and ontology/metaphysics
• Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (M. Noll) on an "insider view" of Evangelicalism and its paucity of intellectual robustness over time
• The Post-Christian Mind (H. Blamires) to follow up on . . . 
• The Christian Mind (H. Blamires), which Noll was probably thinking of
• Early Christian Readings of Genesis One (C. Allert) on diversity of early Christian thought, relative to the literalistic position some modern-day Christians take on the mode of creation
• Just Plain Data Analysis (G. M. Klass) as a simple but not simplistic explanation of how people use numbers and statistics to best describe reality around them

Happy thinking and reading!