Blog - Page 66 of 318 - John H Armstrong

My Birthday: Pondering Life and Mortality

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:51-05:00March 1st, 2013|Categories: Death, Personal, The Future|

As you age you clearly become more aware of the brevity of life, at least of your own life. Today I celebrate my sixty-fourth birthday. There was a time when a big deal was made out of my birthday but I celebrated my birthday yesterday with my wife and two adult children, a simple meal and quiet time to be together. Life, and birthdays, are more simple for me these days. Don’t get me wrong. I am incredibly grateful to be alive. I love life and I really love this blessing the Lord has granted to me of longer life. I just never had any idea that I would actually get to this point in life. (I doubt anyone does if you get my drift.)

Job says, “Are not the days of my life few? Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort” (Job 10:20). Well, the days of our life are few and if measured by centuries or millennia or, especially, by eternity they are very few regardless of how long we live.

Psalm 144 came to my mind as I thought about my life […]

Understanding our Exilic Missional Context: Evangelicalism and Liberalism in Twentieth Century America

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:51-05:00February 28th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Church History, Culture, Current Affairs, Emergent Church, History, Ideology, Missional Church, Politics, Protestantism, Reason, The Church, The Future, Women in the Church|

Most historians and religion scholars now agree that by the twentieth century liberal Protestantism had led to a mainstream Protestantism that was vague, theistic and excessively nationalistic. In a profound sense, concludes British Christian Studies scholar Linda Woodhead, “liberal Protestantism’s triumph can be said to lie to some extent in its disappearance; it dissolved into the blood stream of American culture” (An Introduction to Christianity, 261). I think this is one of the most important single sentences in all that I’ve written in my recent posts about the growing unimportance of Christian faith to most Americans, especially the youngest Americans.

In contrast to this shrinking of Protestant faith the evangelicalism of Moody and Sunday gave rise to a more combative counter-cultural movement that was built on opposition, opposition to liberalism. These more conservative and populist movements produced battles over science in the first half of the century and then battles over political control of the nation in the second half, but I get a little ahead of myself.

Linda Woodhead begins her chapter on twentieth-century Christianity, in her most […]

How Exile Came About: American Protestantism's Common Ground (3)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:52-05:00February 27th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Church History, Culture, Kingdom of God, Protestantism, Reason, Roman Catholicism, The Church, The Future, Unity of the Church|

Three main points underscore the unity that American Protestantism enjoyed into the early part of the twentieth century.

Protestants shared a voluntaristic approach that viewed religion as a matter of individual free choice thus it was able to tolerate the co-existence of different Protestant churches and the differences between these churches since they all willingly embraced the greatest American accomplishment in freedom–the separation of church and state. A symptom of this stance was that the church began withdrawing from the public square in favor of investing its effort into the private, domestic circle. This stance led large parts of the church to embrace particular concerns about the morals of the individual, the relationship between the sexes and the overall welfare of the nuclear family. In the words of scholar Linda Woodhead, “Increasingly, Protestantism became a religion of ‘the family’” (An Introduction to Christianity, 257).
Protestants shared a growing optimism about human choice and ability, which eventually led to the acute problem of “rugged Christian individualism,” a problem that we now equate with America in general. It was assumed, when this line of thinking began to be widely accepted, […]

How Exile Came About: Theological and Cultural Developments in the Nineteenth Century (2)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:52-05:00February 26th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Church History, Culture, Evangelism, Feminism & Women, Kingdom of God, Religion, The Church, Women in the Church|

Near the end of the nineteenth century the evangelical experience of Christianity in America changed things in the church even more radically than previous movements had done within historic Protestantism. While the paradigm of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress remained deeply embedded in the evangelical conversion system a new version would soon emerge in the Protestant psyche by the first decade or so of the twentieth century. Billy Sunday (1863–1935) brought the message of Christ to multitudes in both America and Britain. The demands of conversion were “much relaxed” (An Introduction to Christianity, 252) through his preaching. On the final day of Billy Sunday’s New York revival campaign he asked: “Do you want God’s blessing on you, your home, your church, your nation, New York? If you do, raise your hands . . . How many of you men and women will jump to your feet and come down and say, ‘Bill, here’s my hand for God, for home, for my native land, to live and conquer for Christ.” The structure of Bunyan’s conversion model was clearly retained […]

How Exile Came About: Theological and Cultural Developments in the Nineteenth Century (1)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:52-05:00February 25th, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Church History, Culture, Current Affairs, Feminism & Women, Freedom, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, The Church|

My recent blogs have been devoted to developing a perspective I refer to as missional-ecumenism. I want to show where I believe we are in America today–particularly in terms of the church, culture and our mission. I am a passionate missional-ecumenist. This passion is deeply rooted in three principal texts, all found in the Fourth Gospel; John 13:34-35, 17:20-23 and 20:21. What we discover in the Fourth Gospel is that God is a trinity of loving persons who created humankind in his image. The Father sent the Son into the world to redeem the whole cosmos (cf. Colossians 1:15-20). He is now recreating us by the Spirit, forming a unified redeemed people into a community of faith, hope and love. In this theological paradigm the church is the mission of God (missio Dei), a mission that reveals God’s love as we live faithfully in community. This means the church is not an institution that does mission so much as it is a people who are mission! (This does not mean we ignore missions and missionaries, as some have argued. We must always keep our strong focus […]

Living and Ancient-Future Faith in Babylon (5)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:52-05:00February 22nd, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Biblical Theology, Church History, Church Tradition, Culture, Current Affairs, Kingdom of God, Lordship of Christ, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Renewal, The Church, The Future|

The words of Jeremiah 29:6 are rather shocking if you get the context and historical moment right. God is telling his people that they will be in this state for a long time thus they should become active in the culture of Babylon, not separatists who go private. When we are not sure whether we will be somewhere for very long we rent or stay with family and friends for a season. But if we plan to stay we are inclined to get a house and begin planting ourselves in the city in which we live. Building, planting, marrying and giving in marriage are signs that a normal community has been established.

Verse six is striking for sure but verse seven provides the perspective that we desperately need in modern Babylon. These exiles are told to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf. . .” This is the counsel I believe God has for the church in the West in the twenty-first century. We […]

Living an Ancient-Future Faith in Exile (4)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:52-05:00February 21st, 2013|Categories: America and Americanism, American Evangelicalism, Biblical Theology, Church History, Church Tradition, Culture, Current Affairs, Kingdom of God, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Renewal, The Church, The Future|

Before I proceed with my response to the question of living in exile I would like for you to read Jeremiah 29:1–23. Please pay very careful attention to the italicized portions of the text that I have added.

1 These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. 2 This was after King Jeconiah, and the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the artisans, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. 3 The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It said: 4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they […]

Living an Ancient-Future Faith in Exile (3)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:52-05:00February 20th, 2013|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Biblical Theology, Church History, Church Tradition, Culture, Current Affairs, Discipleship, Kingdom of God, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Renewal, The Church, The Future|

Conservative evangelical leaders are generally comfortable discussing doctrine and faith. Most evangelical pastors were taught to expound the Scripture in their formal education. This is our strength, generally speaking, even though I do not think we realize some of our glaring weaknesses that show up in this area of our strength. We can also discuss vocation, work and cultural engagement, but with a much less clarity and passion. The latter, namely cultural engagement, is too often conceived of in terms of rejection/restoration, huge category mistakes that I am challenging in my blogs this week.

A marvelous example of these points can be made by looking at the recent history of the “modern” home school movement. (Remember, generally there were no other types of primary schools in early America!) My wife and I resisted the first appeal of the home school movement as a radically anti-public response to educating our two children. We finally agreed to look at this movement as an option when we took a hard look at the education that our son was actually receiving in […]

How to Criticize the Culture – Living an Ancient-Future Faith in Exile (2)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:53-05:00February 19th, 2013|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Biblical Theology, Culture, Current Affairs, Kingdom of God, Renewal, The Church, The Future|

Is our response as Christians, living in Babylon culturally, to drop out of all attempts to shape and form a new and better culture? Should we “shake the dust off our feet” and move on. Or should we deduce that the culture is lost and filled with darkness and our role is to hold up the light and tell them to come to us in order to be blessed? These responses, and more, are common.

More recently the church began to fight back. We wanted to stop the cultural slide to immorality and massive social change by calling upon our leaders to announce the laws of God and to enforce them as ways to correct our slide toward secularism.

I believe we got this all wrong. The Franciscan tradition teaches a better way. It says that the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. It reasons, rightly I think that oppositional energy only creates more of the same, bad energy and bad practice.

So what is the church to do? I suggest that we become faithfully […]

Living an Ancient-Future Faith in Exile (1)

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:15:53-05:00February 18th, 2013|Categories: American Evangelicalism, Biblical Theology, Church History, Culture, Kingdom of God, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, Renewal, The Church|

Over the last several weeks I’ve tried to lay out a call to the church, and to leaders of the church, that would summon us to courage and clarity with regard to our role in the world of our time. I have drawn from Martin Luther’s model of “The Babylonian Captivity.” I have also drawn from the more biblical model of “living in exile.” I want to return to the idea of exile and develop it positively in terms of the opportunities that we have to live in faith, hope and love in the twenty-first century.

The biblical concept of exile is seen in the story of Israel in the Old Testament. But the model belongs to “us and our children” because Paul refers to the church as “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16), thus clearly connecting salvation/covenant history. Whether or not it was God’s intention (revealed plan) to create a church that was culturally at home in what we call Christendom is debatable. That such happened, and that we inherited the fruit of this marriage between church […]