Lately my days have been taken up with preparing a book and a course titled "Patron (and Matron) Saints" for Postmoderns (see my blog, deadchristianssociety.blog.com). The book, course, and blog feature the lives of Gregory the Great, Margery Kempe, John Comenius, John Newton, Charles Simeon, Amanda Berry Smith, Charles M. Sheldon, and Dorothy L. Sayers.Armstrong encourages Emergents to read biographies of "dead Christians" and there find inspiration for their conversation about how we do church.
So the question has haunted me: "Why should Christians today read biographies of 'dead Christians' from ages past?"
One particularly forceful answer has hit me from (what some evangelicals might consider) "left field"—the young movement of Emergent Christian thinkers and leaders...
TallSkinnyKiwi calls this good advice, and cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the early favorite among German Emergents.
EmergentNo says that Armstrong is trying to hawk his upcoming book, and though they would probably not disagree that we can learn from the lives of those who have come before us, they argue that the Gospel is unchanging, and therefore we do no need to look to how it has been adapted in the past (ostensibly because it has not been adapted). As always, the comments attached to the EmergentNo post are enlightening (pun intended).
1 comment:
I think every Christian (not just Emergents) should read biographies and autobiographies of other Christians.
The "church" has always taught that reading this type of literature strenthens us, opens us to new (old) ideas, reaffirms our part in the universal church and encourages us to stand firm in the faith as those before us have. And music is the same- think through the words of "Faith of Our Fathers".
The gospel does not change, but the vehicle for the message must. I do not use papyrus to write letters on and ask that they be sent from church to church. Now I can use the internet! I remember that blog you had me read about if Paul lived today- what his ministry would look like. So adapt- just don't lose the truth in the adaptation. The standards must always be the same or they are not truth.
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