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!