A Living Faith

What Christianity is is constantly being negotiated, debated, and reformed by the human beings who call themselves Christians.

We as a church recently completed a twelve-week study on the Church Fathers, based on Bryan Litfin’s volume, Getting to Know the Church Fathers (2nd ed., Baker, 2016). Litfin’s book covers the many intriguing developments which took place within early Christianity from the second to the fifth centuries A.D. Each chapter is devoted to a particular church father or mother, including figures such as: Ignatius of Antioch, Perpetua of Carthage, Augustine of Hippo, and Patrick of Ireland.

Many of these figures are well known for their participation in the various heated doctrinal debates of their day. As the (standard) story goes, these figures fought tooth and nail to preserve the precious truth of Christian orthodoxy which had been settled from the beginning yet was being threatened by many opponents.

Anyone who has taken the time to research the lives and writings of such figures (in their various historical contexts) quickly learns that this story is not entirely true.

Christian orthodoxy, viewed as a coherent, settled, uniform collection of beliefs and principles, took centuries to develop –I would even say it is still in the process of development.

It was thus anything but settled from the beginning and was not so much attacked by outsiders but was constantly being negotiated and renegotiated by figures within this diffuse movement.

That is why a course on Early Christianity at Boston University can be called “Varieties of Early Christianity.” And it is why Paula Fredriksen can publish a new book on early Christian history called, Ancient Christianities: The First Five Hundred Years (Princeton University Press, 2024).

What Fredriksen’s title indicates, in an admittedly provocative way, is that Christianity was so diffuse and so diverse in the early centuries that it may mislead to call it Christianity in the singular, when on the ground, things weren’t that tidy.

All this is to say that Christianity –a movement or way of life founded upon certain stories, texts, beliefs, values, and practices– was constantly being constructed, reconstructed, formed, reformed, negotiated, and renegotiated by Christians throughout the centuries.

Some thing called “Christianity,” doesn’t exist “out there” in the world, not in some essentialist way. What exists, rather, are human beings who give Christianity meaning, who have committed their lives to the values and teachings of Jesus and who attempt to embody Christ’s vision today.

“Christianity,” therefore, is a kind of a catch-all term for the millions of humans in different times and places who worship Jesus and submit their lives to his shaping love.

Christianity, you could say, is as dynamic, mobile, and diverse as the human beings who affiliate with it.

Now, many have noticed (to their utter dismay at times) the sharply contentious nature of Christian discourse. “How can you all be united if you’re constantly fighting over this or that passage, doctrine, or social issue? Why would someone want to join a movement that is fragmented into so many denominations, traditions, and groups?”  

What I want to suggest is that Christianity, as a global, transhistorical movement of human beings, is by nature constituted by such activity.

We are not, in other words, to think of it as something fixed, inert, and concrete (“existing out there”) which is either possessed/valued or rejected/threatened. What Christianity is is constantly being negotiated, debated, and reformed by the human beings who call themselves Christians.

We see this phenomenon in the very pages of the New Testament, where there are four different portraits of the one figure Jesus Christ. We see varying perspectives on Torah-observance and Christ-faith (James, Paul), on participation in public rituals (Paul, Revelation), and on a host of other issues. The New Testament itself is a clear window then into the living nature of early Christianity.

The apostles, to be sure, were charged with receiving the words and teachings of Jesus and passing them along to subsequent generations. Such “tradition,” however, was always meant to be embodied, “lived-out” by real human beings in real social situations.

What Christianity looks like then, has been negotiated and renegotiated, contested and (temporarily) settled, formed and reformed, again and again and again.

Lest you think this opens Christianity up to relativity, fluidity, and constant change, let me remind you that certain controls were always in use, be it a canonical set of texts (i.e., Scriptures) or a confessed creed (i.e., Apostles Creed; Rule of Faith), or structure of leaders (i.e., bishops, priests, etc.).

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but the human beings who follow Christ and the precise circumstances in which they live, change as regularly as the four seasons of nature.

The figures in Litfin’s book did participate heavily in the construction of catholic (what has come to be known as “orthodox”) Christianity.

Through their bold arguments, assertive actions, and heroic lives, they advanced discourse about Christianity, helping future generations “take up” an established tradition and apply it to their own contexts and beyond.

The apparently fractious, frustratingly contentious nature of global and transhistorical Christianity is evidence of its living nature.

Jesus, in other words, did not give us stone tablets into which new laws, truths, and principles were etched never to leave the page. He gave us his very own Spirit, which causes all followers of Christ –male, female, young, old, slave, free– to share the very mind of God.

What this means is that “Christianity” is under the stewardship of Christ’s followers. It is constantly being debated, contested, reformed, and renegotiated, which speaks to its vital, living character.

Both in antiquity and modernity, such contention has at times taken pernicious, unchristian forms. But historically, Christianity has always been “in-process.” To see that still today should come as no surprise.

It is the task of believers right now then, to receive what has been handed down, to digest it through the Holy Spirit, and to embody it in our modern, unique situation.

Christianity, therefore, is alive.

It is not inert, fixed, or at rest. It is what Christians, in their Spirit-filled thinking, reflecting, and doing, “show it to be” at any given moment in history.

As we continue to negotiate and renegotiate our Christian tradition(s), let us welcome the Holy Spirit and commit to the discipline of love.

Let us offer our time, energy, and attention, to the vital task of construction and reconstruction, formation and reformation. And let that activity in and of itself be a living sacrifice offered in living faith to the living Christ.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

A Scriptural Imagination

“Learning to read the Bible well and developing a scriptural way of living requires slow reading, sustained attention, and community.”

One of the most interesting courses I took while studying at Duke Divinity School was a semester-long close-reading of Luke’s Gospel in the original Greek. The professor, C. Kavin Rowe –now Vice Dean of the Faculty and the George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament– is not only a remarkable scholar and teacher, he is also a deeply committed Christian.

The bulk of the course consisted of independent study of the Greek text of Luke, which resulted in fresh translations of each passage and rich in-class discussion. In addition to translating Luke’s Greek and reading vast swathes of Joel Green’s commentary, we were also required to do something else: to read Luke in English… a lot.

With syllabus in hand, looking ahead to next week’s assignment, we all felt relatively comfortable with the course’s workload and rhythm. But right before we were dismissed at the end of session one, Dr. Rowe said, “Oh yes, in addition to translation and commentary reading, I’d like you to read the Gospel of Luke in English… three times.”

Now, in the King James Version, Luke’s Gospel totals 25,939 words, making it the 10th longest book in the King James Bible (if you count the number of “words” in Hebrew/Greek, it’s the 12th longest book in the Bible). It is the longest book, by a considerable margin, in the New Testament. If one page of single-spaced text amounts to about 500 words, then Luke’s Gospel in English hovers around 50 pages. And we had to read it three times… every week.

One thing Professor Rowe stressed was that each reading must be completed in one sitting. Now, of course you’re all thinking: Well, what if I have to use the bathroom?! Dr. Rowe was (reluctantly) open to such an excuse but encouraged us to use the bathroom before we sat down to read!

Over the course of the semester (about 14 weeks), we probably read Luke over thirty times. And I have to say, the process was deeply formative, both academically and spiritually.

Dr. Rowe recently published a little book called Leading Christian Communities in which he asks questions such as: “What does it mean to be a Christian community? And what does it mean to lead one? How does a pastor address today’s challenges, from lack of faith in institutions, to conflict in the church, to the tension between tradition and innovation?”

In one chapter, “Becoming a Christ-Shaped Leader,” Dr. Rowe discusses the vital importance of cultivating a “fundamentally Christian background” in one’s institution or organization such that “Christian thought and practice are second nature.”

“Having a Christian background,” he writes, “makes it easier to think and behave in ways that are Christian and harder to think and behave in ways that aren’t.”

The crucial question is “what kind of background provides the salient features needed to develop or extend Christian institutional patterns so that our work is organized Christianly as a matter of habit.”

In the following chapter Rowe writes: “Nothing is so crucially important to the Christian shape of this background as a scriptural imagination.”

Now, anyone who has walked the halls of Duke Divinity School or has read anything from the pen of Richard Hays (Dr. Rowe’s teacher) will be familiar with the phrase “scriptural imagination.” By imagination we do not mean the capacity for “certain kinds of play or fantasy that we have in abundance as children and often lose as we age” (Rowe’s words).

“Imagination, rather, means the way the total person is involved in interpreting and being in the world –the part we actively play in constructing a vision of life for ourselves and for others.”

The reality is: we are always actively involved in the interpretation and (virtual) construction of our world. “Our imagination [thus] helps to structure the concrete patterns of daily, lived existence.”

To speak of a Scriptural imagination, “is to speak about the scriptural shape of a whole life, a way of being in the world that evidences a lifelong process of transformation by the power of Holy Scripture… Scripture aims at the formation of the total pattern that is the way we are in the world –thought and practice together in one life.”

Forming such a Scriptural imagination is precisely what Dr. Rowe had in mind when he required us to read Luke three times each week. In his book, Leading Christian Communities, Dr. Rowe provides four habits of reading Scripture well.

Apart from the acquisition of tools which allow for a fuller and more patient exploration of Scripture’s meaning (i.e., Hebrew/Greek, cultural background, literary background, etc.), Rowe provides the following four habits.

“Reading Scripture well requires us (1) to be slow and patient rather than fast and immediate. Inseparable from this is the need to nourish the habit of (2) paying concentrated and prolonged attention. We also need to cultivate the habit of (3) reading Scripture in community. Finally, reading Scripture well requires us (4) to remember the past –habitually.”

In the book, he provides brief but helpful discussions of each of these four habits, but for the sake of space, I will treat them together.

Many forces in our media-crazed, technologically advanced world push against the slow and patient reading that is required to form a Scriptural imagination. Paying concentrated and prolonged attention to anything is somewhat rare in 21st century American culture.

For this reason, Dr. Rowe required his students to stop what they were doing, sit down with Luke’s Gospel for two hours, and read the whole story through with no interruption. Doing this over and over again helped us internalize the content of Luke’s Gospel and develop a tolerance for long, sustained study of Scripture, which is vital to any vibrant Christian life.

As we now know, social media has afforded unprecedented opportunities for public, individual expression. Human beings today, arrayed with various personal accounts, pages, and devices, are quite used to thinking and speaking individually and independently.

Such individualism has penetrated the church, as Christians across America view their faith as “something between me and God.” The potency of their faith, their positions on a host of issues, their interpretations of Scripture are often individually based, a rather “new” phenomenon when considered historically!

Dr. Rowe targets this trend, drawing attention to the following key reality: Scripture, from the very beginning, was intended to be read by communities not individuals.

“The theological logic of the texts,” he writes, “presupposes a community of readers. The church is the place where reading all the different Biblical texts together as one book makes [the most] interpretive sense.”

Lastly, Rowe notes the importance of history, or remembrance as he calls it.

As mentioned above, the Bible was meant to be received by living communities who were in turn formed by the text itself. Christians today must remember that “we are not the first to read the Bible; indeed, it has reached us only because it has been handed down from generation to generation.”

Studying the ways in which Scripture formed the living communities who then passed on certain interpretive habits (tradition) to their descendants, is thus vital in forming a Scriptural imagination today.

That is why it is essential to study the church fathers and mothers, the medieval theologians and monks, and the reformers and modern interpreters of these texts. Seeing how the Bible has been received by Christians throughout history is essential to our reception of the same texts.

Reading Scripture well, then, is not a matter of knowing Greek and Hebrew, having a high IQ, and “figuring it out” on one’s own. It’s a matter of submitting oneself humbly and devotedly to a lifelong process of formation which takes time, attention, energy, and, of course, a living community.

The object is to immerse oneself in Scripture such that Scripture becomes the very background of one’s life.

Only then will Christian habits and patterns of thinking “make sense” and become second nature, which in the end is what we’re all really after.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Coping with Complexity

The world of human beings is becoming exponentially more complex.

Of course, one can point to the (now) intricate mechanisms by which we acquire food, healthcare, education, property, etc. But beyond the fulfillment of these basic needs, the world of ideas, categories, and concepts is growing in complexity too.

Today’s generations are expected to cope (successfully!) with this extreme increase in the world’s complexity. And as we are seeing today, not all humans cope the same way.

I was recently loaned a stimulating book on leadership entitled, Systems Sensitive Leadership: Empowering Diversity Without Polarizing the Church. At its subtitle suggests, the book deals directly with church leadership. However, its principles could apply to a number of other contexts.

The preface begins, “This book is about the ‘Four Big C’s’ of our day: change, complexity, confusion, and conflict. We are going through a period of human history when change and complexity seem to feed on one another. Complexity forces us to change. But change only makes things more complex. No wonder we end up confused. Nor is it surprising that conflict is on the rise.”

The book’s aim is to help leaders maintain healthy congregations in the midst of these dynamics. Toward that end, they discuss the research of developmental psychologist Clare Graves who identified (in 1974) eight “thinking systems” by which human beings cope with their ever-changing world.

“By the time we reach adulthood,” the authors (not Graves) write, “several thinking systems are part of our makeup. They run concurrently within us, like layers of consciousness, all competing for a voice in personal decisions and actions. But one system will have the dominant voice. This “dominant system” will influence our attitudes and behavior more than all the others. We will turn to its “rules” almost instinctively under duress or psychological pressure.”

The authors, first, present in outline all eight thinking systems. “Why eight?”, they ask, “Why not just one?” Their answer: “Multiple systems are necessary, for they are the mind’s defense against the complexity of our existence.”

This complexity is “not so much that of crowded calendars, congested freeways, and demanding schedules,” although these are all ubiquitous in the modern West. We’re dealing, rather, with “a deeper complexity, a more profound kind of problem. What Graves called the “problems of our existence.””

Anyone who has taken an Introduction to Psychology course may recall Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” or even Freud’s “stages of personality development.” Graves’s typology, while related, is notably distinct.

“At every stage of our development we must resolve certain critical issues before moving to the next stage. And this is true whether we are talking about individuals or entire societies.”

“The first and most basic problem (for societies and individuals) is securing food, warmth, and shelter [System 1]. Next comes the problem of holding the “tribe” together and creating a safe place for the most vulnerable members [System 2]. Beyond that is the problem of amassing power to fend off enemies and aggressors [System 3]. With violence let loose, there is a fourth problem, of bringing “might makes right” under the control of law and principle” [System 4].

Each of these stages presents four distinct “problems of existence”: survival, interpersonal bonding, protection from enemies, and the creation of an ordered society. These four “problems” help produce each of the first four “thinking systems,” but given rising complexity in recent decades, our problems and thinking systems don’t stop there.

“What’s different now,” they say, “is the number of systems contending with each other – twice as many as just a few generations ago. Until recently the higher-numbered systems [i.e., Systems 5-8] were all but unknown because no one had a need for them.”

“Life remained simple enough until the middle of the 20th century so that most people relied on System 3 or System 4 as their dominant system. Then, almost overnight, revolutionary advances in science, technology, and communication thrust far more complexity on us.”

The human species in the modern West had both encountered and resolved the first four problems of existence mentioned above (survival, interpersonal bonding, protection from enemies, creation of an ordered society). But then in the mid-20th century “new problems of existence” became apparent as the world around us rapidly changed.

Humans were exposed to problems and situations that were new in the truest sense of the term. With the rise of science, technology, and communication, what late-20th century humans would come to experience was like nothing their ancestors had experienced before.

As complexity increased and genuinely new situations arose, humans had to learn to “cope” with such realities. “It is our perception of complexity, not the actuality of it,” according to these authors, “which triggers new thinking systems” to emerge.

It doesn’t take a degreed cultural critic to notice the rise in discord, polarization, and interpersonal conflict in our country today. Some point to generational differences, neurological disparities, technological advances, and various other culprits to explain our predicament.

The work of Graves presents for me­ a useful framework with which to approach this issue.

“Why do those people have such trouble getting along with those people? Why can’t either side seem to get through to the other at all?”

What these authors propose is that human beings alive today are exposed to levels and forms of complexity that are different from those who came before. Also, they would say that our perceptions of and responses to such increased complexity are different from person to person.

When a person is suddenly faced with a situation or “problem of existence” that another human being has never faced, the former must learn how to “cope” with this new reality, which produces neural wiring and conceptual categories that the latter has never needed to form.

In other words: Not until you’ve encountered such levels of complexity are you required to develop lasting ways of navigating such complexity in the future.

This phenomenon, which we’re seeing more and more of today, I think explains much of the tension present in America now.  

While such differences are not merely generational, a generational illustration may still be useful:

Millennials (born between 1981-1996) and Gen-Z (born between 1997-2012), for example, have been exposed to situations and “problems of existence” that Gen X (born between 1965-1980) and Baby Boomers (born between 1946-1964) have simply never encountered.

Over the past 50 years, debates about politics, race, equity, gender, sexuality, climate, economics, religion, science, etc., have all become infinitely more complex.

The questions asked, the situations faced, the complexity encountered today, is of a different level entirely from what came before. And this requires (and engenders) different sets of categories, processes, and frameworks to “think with” among human beings.

Some of us, therefore, have faced situations and “problems of existence” which others (of us) have simply never faced. Some have thus developed certain ways of thinking and processing because they’ve had to, while others haven’t because they never needed to.

As we continue navigating the complexity of our world and the interpersonal conflicts which extend into all areas of life, I would encourage you, Christians especially, to exercise charity, patience, and grace, as you notice such tensions and differences.

Perhaps he/she thinks that way because the situations and problems he/she has faced called for precisely that kind of mental framework. Perhaps you think differently by default because you have had to navigate a very different array of situations and problems in life.

The goal, I think, is self-awareness, personal growth, and communal health. By recognizing that we “think differently” because our varied life experiences have called for and helped develop different “thinking systems,” my hope is that we can learn to better love one another and help spur each other on toward health and growth.

Let us bear with each other in patience, long-suffering, and love, navigating life’s daunting complexity together, with Jesus Christ always leading the way.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Embodied Religion

Processions give us a glimpse into the manifold ways in which early Christians performed their Christianity, through the position, and movement of bodies, and everything else that involved…

This morning the town of Freeport celebrated the 248th year of American independence in typical fashion: with a parade.

Now, you might be thinking: “He’s about to write on patriotism, nationalism, and Christianity, here we go…”

Actually, no, not today! Although that is a vital topic to consider… No, rather than focusing on the cause of such celebration, I would like to focus on the celebration itself: the parade.

Believe it or not, Christians have participated in parades – or processions­– for almost 1700 years.

Processions can be defined quite simply as “groups of people moving in formal arrangements along a particular route in the landscape.”

Scholar of religion David Frankfurter writes, “Indeed, we may say that processions provided the principal means of Christianizing a landscape—integrating topography with legend, ideology, and some kind of collective Christian identity. Through processions and their routes, participants learned what sites were focal and which marginalized, what songs or prayers or legends corresponded to which stages along a route.”

Another scholar writes, “Processions may be studied from a ‘bird's eye view,’ mapping the route and locating the stops along the way.” However, this approach limits one’s perspective to “an aerial vantage point, distant from the walkers themselves.”

“By contrast a walkers’ view considers processions closer to ground level—how it feels to walk on uneven stone, sense the perfumes, sounds, and movement of processants.”

After Christianity was legalized, church leaders and local populations came up with all sort of reasons to hold processions! These “Christian parades” thus animated life in ancient cities and in the countryside.

“Each gathering had its own costumes, participants, topography, and ceremonies performed at various stops,” writes Georgia Frank. Onlookers, even from a distance, recognized such spectacles by their “sounds, smells, attire, and the animals and objects that were pulled or carried.”

Frank focuses on portabilia, the objects processants would wear or carry during such parades, but given our town’s celebration on Thursday, I am interested in the procession form itself.

What compels human beings to band together wearing distinct clothing, holding certain objects, and moving through a landscape or built environment in an orderly fashion? And what about this is so appealing to humans that they do it again and again and again (multiple times a year considering my town’s different parades)?

My hypothesis? Parades or processions, especially those of the late antique Mediterranean world, engage persons in their full humanity: sights, sounds, smells, emotions, memories, dispositions, and the surrounding environment all converge to produce a profoundly holistic human experience.

“Processions packed the streets in antiquity. Groups moved in formation, halting at designated spots and filling the city with music, bellowing animals, colorful fabrics, flower garlands, and incense boxes, as shouts and acclamations resounded.”

The physicality of such processions stands out: “Breathing in the fragrant blossoms, the perfumes, and incense, processants caried objects in their hands, on their shoulders or heads, or on wheels. In addition to touching or clasping an object, the processant might feel their own balance and gait affected by the weight and bulk of the object, sense its heat in the Mediterranean sun, or catch a streetlamp’s reflection after dark.”

Why am I telling you this? Well, for many in the modern West, Christianity has to do only with the mind and the soul, not the body. Sure, Christian texts have loads to say about the body –what to do with it, (more often) what not to do with it– but we’re still operating in the realm of information, knowledge, and moral decision-making.

For Christians of the first six centuries, however, religious activity was, well… embodied.

Standing with raised hands, kneeling with foreheads to the earth, swaying to the sounds of stringed instruments or throaty voices, early Christians performed their religion not only in their minds, but in their bodies too.

Processions give us a glimpse then into the manifold ways in which early Christians performed their Christianity, through the position, and movement of bodies, and everything else that involved…

Bodies sensed other bodies via all five senses; objects carried or worn as processants traversed meaningful landscapes; emotions welled up in the soul as memories were triggered and released. Such rituals “charged” ancient Christians with an intense, holistic experience of God.

A modern analogue to this experience is the Christian service of worship.

So often, Sunday morning services are designed with two things in view: the heart and the mind. So much of the human being is missed, however, when we fail to consider the body and its relation to objects and space.

Feeling the wood of the church door, sliding and slouching into the oaken pew, smelling the faint incense or candle wax burning at the altar (or perhaps even the stale coffee from last week!): these are elements of a Sunday morning experience, which I believe can be moments of divine encounter.

In sum, I am not trying to convince you to integrate processions into your regular Christian experience! (Although if you feel led, more power to you!)

My aim, rather, is to lead you to take the body seriously when it comes to Christian worship. Sway with the music, sense the wood of the old pews, gaze at the candle flames a little longer than you normally would. Let God engage you as a fully embodied creature, beyond just the sermon, beyond just the songs.

To be an embodied Christian is to join the thousands who came before us who experienced God in precisely this way. Let us join this ancient procession, which has been active for hundreds upon hundreds of years.

We don’t have bodies, we are bodies. Let God meet you there.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Power Shared

As long as power remains in the few and not in the all, the church is bound to face undue difficulty, conflict, and corruption, as does the world.

For quite some time now, I have wanted to teach a class on what is probably my favorite period of church history (give or take a century or two): the period of the apostolic fathers (2nd–5th century AD).

This past Sunday, we began our journey and will continue over the next twelve weeks, studying figures such as Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Perpetua of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and many others.

Such figures comprise the focus of many scholars who specialize in early Christianity. However, I would like to set the record straight regarding some key issues in the discipline.

Scholars who study early Christianity have a wealth of literary sources at their disposal. Some scholars in their reconstruction of the history of this period rely almost exclusively on such sources.

The problem is: literary sources from late antiquity present the perspectives of elite authors who held a significant degree of social, economic, and (often) political power.

In other words, those who had the capacity and resources to produce literary works that were disseminated, used, copied, and passed down (to us), represent a very slim proportion of the total population of ancient Christians.

Therefore, if you construct your image of ancient Christianity entirely on the basis of these sources, in the end what you’ll see is the Christianity of those in power, not what I’d call a “representative sample”!

To put it differently, there existed vast swaths of ancient Christians not considered elite, privileged, wealthy, or literate. Therefore, if we rely exclusively on portrayals of Christianity by those in power, we will miss the invaluable perspective of these “ordinary Christians,” who made up the majority of disciples in the ancient world.

To get at these “ordinary Christians,” however, one must either rely on archaeology, papyrus documents, inscriptions, or other examples of material culture. Or, as Georgia Frank has recently done (in her book Unfinished Christians), one must read ancient literary sources quite critically in attempt to conjure the invisible, other Christians implied therein.

I say this because sometimes people think that literary sources produced by ancient Christians give us a universal, transparent window into the experience of all ancient Christians, but this simply is not true.

With that said, I do not wish to imply that all such literary sources are worthless for historical reconstruction. No! They are incredibly worthwhile pieces of evidence.

However, in using them, one must keep in mind that they represent but a small portion of the larger Christian population: the perspectives of those with power.

This brings me to my second point: the distribution of power within (ancient and modern) Christianity.

For many, when they think of power, they think of political, economic, or perhaps physical power. Power –the subtle and, at times, undetectable influence of some persons over others– can take a variety of forms within Christian circles.

As I said before, literary sources from late antiquity were almost universally produced by those in power: clergy with the education, time, and resources to think up, dictate, and publish literary tractates; educated scholars with the training, sponsorship, and leisure to compose treatises on abstract topics; even monks whose authority extended over, at times, several monastic communities, made them indistinguishable from the bishops in neighboring towns.

Power, like air or water, is ubiquitous and always up for grabs, that is: it constantly passes into and out of people who may not be conscious of it at all.

Such power results in a perspective on reality that is inescapably different from the perspective of those without power: i.e., the questions asked by masters were different from those asked by slaves; the topics valued by the rich were different from those valued by the poor; the version of Christianity espoused by those with income, property, and social support, was (and is) different from that espoused by those without such earthly privilege.

Power is everywhere and affects everything. As Christians, we must be especially cognizant of this.

Such power, which often passes into pastors, church leaders, teachers, and others, must always be redistributed to other members of the church. If power is allowed to pool in the office or self-image of some but not all, this will result in blindness and corruption. It always does.

The church, from the very beginning, was to be a place where power was relinquished, where first became last, those with much gave to those with little, where slave, free, Jew, Greek, male, and female, were spiritual equals in Christ.

As long as power remains in the few and not in the all, the church is bound to face undue difficulty, conflict, and corruption, as does the world.

The Protestant Reformation and the legacy of Martin Luther famously emphasized the priesthood of all believers in response to the supposed “clericalism” many claimed had begun to characterize the Roman Catholic Church.

Clericalism refers to the increased agency of the clergy (bishops, priests, etc.) and the decreased agency of the laity (non-ordained members of the church). Services were being conducted in a way that the laity began to have little to no agency in the church. The Reformation, by translating the Bible into the vernacular of the people (i.e., Luther’s German Bible) and developing a different form of church polity, sought to restore agency to the people, which was a biblical notion in their minds.

The Baptists came to epitomize this principle more than most other denominations (with the exception of maybe the Congregationalists). By reducing the gap between clergy and laity –some Baptist ministers (i.e., Spurgeon) resisted formal ordination for this reason– power was redistributed to all Spirit-filled believers, not pooled among bishops, priests, pastors, or elders.

These principles of radical equality, power redistribution, and the priesthood of all believers must be guarded at all costs, because only through them can the church avoid the power imbalances which plague our world.

Many Christians have been burned by churches due to this unspoken, unaddressed imbalance of power. Through titles, offices, privileges, and personalities, power has been allowed to pool in the few, rather than spread evenly to the all.

As Christians, we all have power: not limited, earthly power, but unlimited, spiritual power: the Holy Spirit. Because it is limitless, such power can be shared among all –it’s not a zero-sum game!– creating a community of equals with different roles who together reflect our Lord Jesus Christ.

If power –unspiritual, unheavenly power– is allowed to pool in the personalities and offices of a few, such will corrupt, distort, and malign, and thus hinder the mission of Christ’s church.

Christianity and power have had a checkered relationship from the very beginning. However, time and again, through Scripture and history, we see that where power is relinquished and redistributed the church succeeds in accomplishing its mission, to the glory of God in Jesus Christ.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Choose the Desert

“The desert offers us the chance to live out the Gospel, if not perfectly, then concretely and, as much as humanly possible, fully.”

Towards the end of my sermon on Pentecost Sunday (5/19), I addressed the topic of idolatry in 1st century (AD) Asia Minor and in 21st century America. I said:

“Worshipping false gods was a very live issue in the Roman Empire in the 1st century and beyond, since the Roman state sought to blend religion and politics, first with Roman ‘pagan’ religion, and then with Christianity. In the first three centuries, Christians were encouraged to worship the emperor as a god and participate in public pagan rituals in homage to other gods. After the conversion of Constantine in 312 AD, the situation changed, but not by much.

While Christians ceased to be persecuted and martyred on account of their faith, they were encouraged to adopt a politically shaped faith, which was precisely what they were asked to adopt before. Christianity became so blended with imperial power that priests, bishops, and patriarchs functioned more as diplomats and politicians than as prophets, disciples, and church planters.

Idolatry ceased to be “worshipping the image of Caesar or Jupiter” and began to be “worshipping the idea of the Holy Roman Empire” (i.e., a Christian nation). Over time, theological debates ensued which in retrospect seem more political than theological. Some Christians tried to escape such politicized faith, setting up camp in the desert to live lives of authentic devotion to Christ.”

Now, I could devote a whole series of posts to the politicization of Christianity in the late Roman Empire (post-325 AD). However, in this post, what I’d like to address is that final line:

“Some Christians tried to escape such politicized faith, setting up camp in the desert to live lives of authentic devotion to Christ.”

These would be the monks. And while monks proliferated throughout Palestine, Syria, Persia, and beyond, my focus is on the monks of Egypt, thought by many to be the pioneers of the monastic tradition and lifestyle.

I was recently made aware of a beautiful little book by the esteemed Coptic historian Tim Vivian, entitled: Journeying into God: Seven Early Monastic Lives (Fortress Press, 1996). The book is by no means new and includes texts that are upwards of 1600 years old! However, the wisdom contained in these early monastic biographies is uncanny in its relevance to our present moment, especially in the United States.

Vivian begins: “Jesus was the first monk–at least according to Saint Euthymius… Each year on the Epiphany, in the East the feast day of Christ’s baptism, Euthymius would follow his Lord’s example (Mt. 4:1-11) and go off into the far reaches of the desert, where he would remain until Palm Sunday… For Euthymius, and thousands of other Christians in the fourth through seventh centuries, monasticism was, literally, the following of Jesus Christ.”

Monasticism as a phenomenon, however, is tragically misunderstood by many in the modern West.

It is often described (pejoratively) as a decisive break with the world, an attempt to escape from society’s ills (as opposed to helping resolve them), an anti-social (selfish) rejection of life with other human beings. However, it must be remembered (as Vivian so helpfully points out) that the Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, deliberately and decisively took up the monastic cause.

The famous story of Jesus’s “wilderness wanderings” (Matt. 4:1-11 and parallels) comes immediately after his baptism in the Jordan by John. When read intertextually –with an eye toward the many OT texts and themes invoked by the NT– it becomes clear that Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan, especially in Matthew’s Gospel, is meant to mimic or re-enact Israel’s crossing of the Jordan and their settlement of the Promised Land.

In the OT, this Jordan river crossing comes after the people’s wilderness wanderings. In the Gospels, however, the order is switched.

Just as Joshua (Yehoshua in Hebrew; Iēsous in Greek) began his official career at Israel’s Jordan river crossing in Joshua 1 & 3, Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew; Iēsous in Greek) experienced a similar commissioning at his baptism in the Jordan in Matthew 3:13-17.

The first thing Jesus does after being commissioned as the new (and better) Joshua is go into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights. In Matt. 4:1 we read that it was the Holy Spirit who led him into the desert, meaning that God willed it to be so.

Other figures throughout Scripture spend considerable time in the desert.

Abraham, of course, journeys through the land of Canaan (moving from the northernmost tip down south) all the way to the Negev (the southernmost desert region) and beyond to Egypt. The sons of Jacob journey through a famine-stricken Canaan down to Egypt, where they’d remain for 430 years.

Moses was deep in the wilderness when he was commissioned by God at the burning bush. The people of Israel spent their first 40 years of freedom (from Egyptian captivity) in the wilderness of Sinai. It was in the desert that God gave Israel Torah (on Mt. Horeb).

Moving forward several hundred years, David fled Saul’s pursuit for nearly seven years, writing some of his most eloquent Psalms in the arid desert of southern Israel. Elijah was fed by God’s hand (via ravens) in the wilderness of Gilead, experienced an existential crisis in a “desert place,” and met the “still, small” presence of YHWH in the wilderness of Sinai.

Many passages can be found in the major and minor prophets which speak of God making a way in the wilderness, causing streams of water to gush forth in the desert, creating an oasis and new Eden in the desolate regions, which would become home for the monks of later centuries.

The desert (or wilderness), therefore, holds a prominent place in the entire Biblical story. It is the place where people leave the trappings and distractions of sinful society, and often end up meeting with God.

Vivian goes on: “The monks of Mount Athos in Greece still refer to their way of life as that of the desert… That desert is and is not our own, can and will never be our own. It is, after all, a place and a time, both distant, both subject to the glories and infirmities of all time and every place, our own included.

That time and place in the early desert must not be idealized. The desert was, conspicuously, inhabited more by demons than angels. Perhaps finally that is what the desert still offers us, and what we most need: to see our demons, to confront them, and finally through love, prayer, humility, and sacrifice, to overcome them.”

Vivian then states what I believe is one of the most poignant lines ever written about the desert:

“The desert offers us the chance to live out the Gospel, if not perfectly, then concretely and, as much as humanly possible, fully.”

It must be said at this point that desert monks, such as those described by Vivian, were not all hermits, that is: solitary monks who lived alone in cells far away from other human beings. Early Egyptian monasticism has bequeathed to us not only these hermetic personalities but also the possibility of communal (coenobitic) monastic life.

Such communities of monks, living together, eating together, working together, and of course praying together, may comprise the most counter-imperial, non-politicized Christianity the late ancient world had ever seen. And such deliberate, focused, authentic devotion is of the utmost relevance to an American Christianity which teeters on (both sides on) the edge of becoming yet another imperial religion.

Like the monastics of Roman Egypt, American Christians must reject the idolatry of imperial religion of any kind. Christians after 325 AD were urged to adopt a politically-shaped faith which became an idol of power and glory to all living in the “Holy” Roman Empire.

Like the monastics of the fourth century and beyond, we must recognize the idolatry of our times, and must choose the desert like our Savior Jesus did.

By “choose the desert,” I do not mean we must up-and-leave physically or geographically. Nor do I mean we must reject all aspects of civilization and development.

By “choose the desert,” I mean rejecting the trappings and deceptions of politicized religion of all kinds, and committing to lives of authentic devotion to our (desert) Savior Jesus Christ.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Teach Us to Pray

Prayer is one of the very few observed practices which finds a place in nearly all forms of human religion.

For Christians prayer happens to be one of the most significant things that we do. Though nearly every Christian prays, nearly every Christian likely wishes they prayed more, prayed better, or prayed differently.

It is ludicrous for me to think I can say something substantial about prayer through one simple blog post. However, here we are…

The Apostle Paul in one of his earliest letters writes, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

He goes on to include some additional commands: “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, abstain from evil, hold fast what is good” (vv. 19-22).

If the Thessalonian believers follow such commands, the God of peace, he says, will “sanctify you completely, keeping your whole spirit, soul, and body blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Paul, in other words, encourages a set of habits which if practiced consistently and sincerely will lead to holiness (and thus wholeness). Among such habits is prayer, specifically what has been called “unceasing prayer.”

In the famous Sayings of the Desert Fathers & Mothers we read, “The brothers asked Agatho, ‘Abba, which virtue in our way of life needs most effort to acquire?’ He said to them, ‘Nothing needs so much effort as prayer. All other efforts in a religious life have room for a measure of rest. But we need to pray till our dying breath. That is the great struggle.’”

Christians intent upon reading the Bible literally have had a difficult time with unceasing prayer. Some monks in antiquity were so insistent about praying at all times that they would enlist others to pray on their behalf while they slept, ate, or did other things which preclude prayer.

If prayer is only understood as a form of speech (audible or inaudible) directed toward God, unceasing prayer would mean unceasing speech, which, in my view, leaves little room for anything else!

Based on a recent book by Norman Wirzba (Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land) I would like to suggest another way of thinking about unceasing prayer: prayer not only as a deliberate practice but as a distinct (and daily) way of being in the world.

Wirzba writes, “What I want to suggest is that prayer is fundamentally an embodied and affective posture that, by opening people to the presence of God, also positions people to be available to each other in God honoring ways.”

Praying, like Sabbath-observance according to Wirzba, is not only a discrete, observable practice (which one does at this or that time) but is an alternative way of being in the world, a different posture, perspective, and lifestyle.

He begins with the topic of attention and the role prayer plays in reorienting our life outlook. “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer,” writes Simone Weil (emphasis added), which suggests that prayer –turning one’s thoughts toward God– both orients and shapes how we attend to the world as a whole.

“Persons who pray,” writes Wirzba, “perceive the world differently than those who do not pray.” Such persons “may not provide a swath of new, scientifically verifiable facts about the world, but they invite others to experience the world as imbued with divine significance.”

To “pray without ceasing” is to turn one’s thoughts toward God in such a way and with such frequency that one’s thoughts and one’s outlook become God’s.

To pray this way is to place our attention, desires, and positions before the chastening presence of God. It’s to allow God to refashion our consciousness such that His consciousness becomes ours.

Toward this end, Wirzba explores the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13 / Luke 11:2-4) which enables disciples to attend (to God and the world) with Jesus. He focuses especially on three clauses: (1) “Your kingdom come…”; (2) “Give us this day…”; (3) “Forgive us our debts...”

“To say your, ‘Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,’ is to want existing ways of being in the world which lead to division, degradation, and death, to be reformed so that they witness to the Godly ways of being that nurture, heal, and liberate life” (Wirzba).

“To call upon heaven,” he says, “is not to long to get to another location, but to long for sinful ways of thinking and living to be defeated so God's ways of mercy and justice become a reality here and now.”

To pray, “Your kingdom come,” is to take one’s awareness of Earth’s kingdoms, with all their imperfections and injustices, and submit them to God’s hand which fashions from that awareness something new.

To pray, “Your kingdom come,” is to ask God to give us a glimpse of His heavenly reality such that we perceive our world differently because we’re seeing it through God’s eyes.

As we see clearly what God’s desired world is, we can work together to transform our current world into the image of God’s kingdom. That’s what it means to say, “Your kingdom come.”

“To say, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ is not a simple matter,” writes Wirzba, “especially for people who have been trained to purchase bread as a commodity.”

“Bread does not have to be,” he writes. “Its existence should not be taken for granted. Bread is but one nurturing and delectable instance of a world that reflects the God who gives life.”

“Give us this day our daily bread,” was originally uttered by Jewish Galilean peasants who struggled to procure enough bread for their families daily. For those who do not live with such food insecurity it’s to pray for bread –which stands for all food and drink– to be transformed in our awareness, from something we take for granted and perhaps hoard, to something we receive as a gift.

Thanking God for the food we eat time and again before meals conditions our minds and hearts to think of food not as something we secure or purchase, but as something we receive always by the hand of God.

Someone who does not ‘pray their way into’ such an awareness may think of bread differently, and since food assumes such a prominent role in our culture and lives, such a difference may be considerable.

“To say, ‘Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors,’ is to recognize that life is undermined by forms of indebtedness which either frustrate the flows of receiving and giving or deny that life is a gift meant to be shared with others” (Wirzba).

“Jesus’s prayer alerts us to the fact that indebtedness creates forms of bondage which prevent people from being fully present and attentive to each other. This is why people need to be released from the oppression that indebtedness creates” (Wirzba).

In the original context economic realities were primarily in view. Creditors oppressed peasant borrowers forcing them into ever deeper forms of debt bondage. Such indebtedness, however, can take a variety of forms in our communities today: debts of power, influence, personality, offense, etc.

When certain persons exercise dominance in a community and thus stifle the contributions of others, a situation of indebtedness is produced which prevents the full flourishing of all in the group. When grudges are held, offenses are unresolved, tension is allowed to linger, possibilities for life and flourishing are threatened.

To pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” is to ask God to transform our habits and life such that debt of any kind is allowed no place in our community.

Wirzba concludes his chapter as follows, “We can now see why prayer is an unceasing and daily way of being, and a set of practical habits that reorient people in their places and communities so that the love of God might move more freely through them. At its core, prayer is the daily action whereby people open themselves to receiving the love of God and letting it become operational within.”

To return to the Apostle Paul: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

If prayer is not just speech directed toward God but is conceived as submitting one’s attention and outlook toward God’s chastening influence, then Paul’s command becomes slightly more realistic.

To “pray without ceasing” is to move into the habit of submitting one’s perception consistently to God’s shaping hand. Over time as we pray and pray and pray, our lives become living prayers, and our thoughts and attention become God’s.  

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Which World?

Christ’s triumph over death signals victory over the forces of evil, a victory in which believers participate even now.

In his commentary on Revelation 5:9 Greg Beale writes, “In the OT a ‘new song’ is always an expression of praise for God’s victory over the enemy, sometimes including thanksgiving for God’s work of creation.” Examples include Psalm 33:3, 40:3, 96:1, 98:1, 144:9, 149:1; Isaiah 42:10; Revelation 5:9, 14:3 (respective ESV text below):

“Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.”

“He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the LORD.”

“Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!”

“Oh sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him.”

“I will sing a new song to you, O God; upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you.”

“Praise the LORD! Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise in the assembly of the godly!”

“Sing to the LORD a new song, his praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.”

“And they sang a new song, saying, "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

“And they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.”

What this implies is that the “new song” of Revelation 5:9 (referenced again in 14:3) results from God’s victory over the enemy and his work of new creation. In this post I’d like to address two questions:

1. Over whom (or what) is God victorious?

2. What exactly is God now creating?

Revelation 5:1-14 provides a continuation of John’s throne room vision of 4:1-11. John the Seer has been “invited up” into a heavenly realm where he witnesses One seated upon a throne praised perpetually by all of God’s people (throughout the ages; i.e., the 24 Elders) and all of God’s creation (i.e., the Four Living Creatures).

In chapter 5, however, everything changes. A seven-sealed scroll appears in the hand of the One seated upon the throne and no one in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth is found worthy (or authorized) to open the scroll. The scroll is a symbol of God’s decrees of judgment and salvation and an outline of the inheritance which awaits believers who endure.

Finally, one is found worthy to open the scroll and read (and execute) its contents: the victorious Lion of Judah, who appears as a bloodied sacrificial Lamb: i.e., Jesus Christ. The scene in Revelation 5 is not a glimpse into the far distant future but a heavenly version of the earthly tale depicting Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

As Jesus endures faithfully on earth and is crucified, dead, and then raised, this is what John sees in heaven. The execution, burial, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is seen by John as the victory of the Lion of Judah, the sacrifice of a divine Passover Lamb. With this, authorization is granted to Christ to both reveal and execute God’s will in history.

At the resurrection of Jesus, the tune in heaven suddenly changes key, and the heavenly hosts begin to sing a “new song” on paradigm with “new songs” sung in the OT.

First, this “new song” signifies God’s victory over enemy forces. But, over whom is God victorious through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ?

It’s not the Romans, since before and after, they remain clearly sovereign in the land of Israel. It’s not the Pharisees, since they too maintain privilege and honor despite Christ’s death. It’s not non-believers, since they flourish throughout the Mediterranean in the first century and beyond. So, who is it? What enemy is defeated at Christ’s resurrection?

The enemy defeated at Christ’s resurrection is neither political, nor religious, nor earthly, but is rather spiritual in nature. In Ephesians 6:12 we read, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Christ’s resurrection thus constitutes D-Day against such “spiritual forces.” It is true that V-Day has yet to come. But Christ’s triumph over death signals victory over the forces of evil, a victory in which believers participate even now.

This means, friends, that by sharing spiritually in the resurrection of Christ now, we gain victory over the forces of greed, hate, jealousy, strife, anger, division, and pride. When those forces run rampant in our families, our communities, our churches, we must stop and say, “Such forces have been defeated at the resurrection of Christ.”

The “new song” that is sung in heaven and thus mirrored in our earthly faith communities is a song of God’s victory over the harmful forces of darkness which have plagued human society from the very beginning. As Christians, i.e., sharers in the resurrection of Christ already, we must claim victory over all such forces even now.

Second, this “new song” signifies thanksgiving for God’s creation. But, what is God creating through Christ’s resurrection?

In 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 we read, “The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died. He died for all so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, then, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, there is new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

Jesus Christ is said to be “the firstborn from among the dead,” “the first fruits of the new creation,” “the re-heading of humanity itself.” The resurrection of Jesus thus entails the birth of a new world entirely.

This is a world with different values, different rules, different vision, and different hope than the old world we are used to. It’s a world in which peace, justice, love, and grace, are prized above all the values our world has held dear. It’s a world in which people of different generations, different nationalities, different perspectives, join as one spiritual family, bound by their common allegiance to Jesus Christ.

The “new song” that is sung on Easter declares victory over evil and new creation. These are not realities we look forward to in the future, however. They are available to us right now. 

When division, jealousy, anger, pride, and greed reign supreme, we are not living in the new world Christ has opened. But when unity, love, justice, humility, and grace reign supreme, Christ is seen seated on the throne at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.

This Easter, let us live in that world, not the old one. Let us honor the cosmic work of Christ by living fully in this new reality.

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And all of God’s people said… Amen.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Redeeming Revelation

“Indeed, no biblical book –perhaps no religious book– has been so simultaneously revered and reviled as Revelation.”

Only recently did I discover the wonderful series put out by Princeton University Press entitled the Lives of Great Religious Books. While we often think of people when we see the word biography, this series presents us with biographies of iconic religious books throughout history.

Volumes in the series –which concern texts as distinct as Augustine’s Confessions, Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, the Koran, the Book of Mormon, etc.– set out to “examine the historical origins of texts from the great religious traditions, and trace how their reception, interpretation, and influence have changed—often radically—over time.” Luckily included within this series is a volume devoted to the Book of Revelation, the final book in modern Bibles which has stupefied interpreters since its initial “publication.”

What I appreciated so much upon reading this volume was the author’s (Timothy Beal) attention to the living nature of what we call “the book of Revelation.” The description of the series sums this up quite well: “As these stories of translation, adaptation, appropriation, and inspiration dramatically remind us, all great religious books are living things whose careers in the world can take the most unexpected turns.” Nowhere is this more obvious than in the “career” of Revelation.

Timothy Beal, Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University, takes us on an exhilarating journey tracing the birth, early life, and later transformations of the book of Revelation. As he states in the preface, “Biographies are never comprehensive, but instead always selective… My selections are driven by an interest in attending to awakenings of new life for Revelation in a variety of cultural contexts and media environments.”

He begins, therefore, with a chapter on origins, discussing the “birth context” of the book of Revelation. He then proceeds through the rest of the volume, tracing varied receptions of the text in the writings of Augustine of Hippo, Hildegard of Bingen, Martin Luther, Cyrus Scofield, Tim Lahaye, Jerry Jenkins, and others.

Beal’s hope in this biography is to reveal the text’s “remarkable, shape-shifting, contagious vitality, for better and for worse, and with no end in sight.”

Now, perhaps some may react negatively to the term “shape-shifting” included above. You might say, “Revelation is God’s Word, the meaning of which is secure and unchanging. By no means then is it shape-shifting.” What Beal means is that the book of Revelation has been received, explained, and appropriated by human beings in a bewildering diversity of ways. “Indeed, no biblical book –perhaps no religious book– has been so simultaneously revered and reviled as Revelation,” he quips.

From the 1st to the 16th century, Revelation’s place within the Christian canon was uncertain. As early as the third century, when bishops began discussing the notion of canon, Dionysius of Alexandria declared that many Christians rejected the book. The famous church historian Eusebius of Caesarea (writing in the fourth century) notes that the book was “undisputed for some but disputed for others.” Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, includes it in his famous list of canonical books in 367 AD, but his contemporary Cyril of Jerusalem does not. Even in Martin Luther’s 1522 edition of the New Testament, the great reformer wrote that “he saw no evidence of its inspiration, that no one knows what it means, and that there are many far better books for us to keep” (!).

Beal goes on to note that, “Debates over the social and theological value of Revelation have chased it through history and continue to this day… Despite its great host of critics, however, the book of Revelation has not only survived, but thrived.”

Along these lines, I’d like to draw attention to one particular section of Beal’s volume. Revelation is often referred to as a “book” of the Christian Bible or perhaps a “scroll” in its original context. However, Beal attempts to problematize this description.

“My approach to this biography is that of a cultural historian,” he writes. “In the field of biblical studies, cultural history explores how biblical words, images, things, and ideas take particular meaningful forms in particular cultural contexts.” He goes on to say: “A cultural-historical approach begins with the fact that there is no singular, fixed, original “Bible” or “book of the Bible” to be received across history. Rather, there are multiple productions of the Bible –that is, biblical media– that are generated and generative in different cultural contexts.” Let’s stop here.

Many of you may be troubled by these words. Those in evangelical settings tend to think of the books of the Bible existing at their beginning in some fixed, original form. They then imagine that through the process of copying, transmitting, and/or translating such “books,” we moved away from their original form (albeit slightly) and now rely on textual critics and scholars to help reconstruct it. What Beal is saying is that for Revelation at least such a narrative is not evident in our sources.

While there must have been a “first draft” of Revelation that was conceived, written down, read, heard, and later transmitted and translated, what we possess today are an incredibly diverse set of manuscript witnesses, from different times and locations, in different languages, with different aims and apparent uses even. Beyond this you can trace various theological, artistic, and media-driven receptions of Revelation, which take it far beyond what it was originally in the first century AD.

In the eyes of a cultural historian then, “the ‘book’ of Revelation is not a self-evident, original literary thing created once and for all in the past and then incarnated in various interpretations throughout history. It constantly changes, forever being made and remade in different cultural productions of meaning.”

In a way, this is basic and true of all books of the Bible: We have a “text” that emerged originally in some form. This text is then received by a community of readers who interpret it and pattern their lives according to its shape. But as time goes on and as those communities (those “users”) become more distant and diverse, the various receptions and uses of that singular text become wildly diverse and unique.

My aim in this post is not to give an evaluative judgment of this phenomenon (to answer the question: “Is this right or wrong?”). All I will say on this point is that some uses of Scripture are more or less aligned with Christian use (throughout history) than others. In other words, these books have historically functioned as Scripture –a set of texts which works to norm the lives of its readers– for Christians in various times and settings. Scripture’s use today is most historically and traditionally consistent when it is forming real Christians into the image of Jesus Christ.

For now, I wish to observe that the book of Revelation has been subject to receptions and uses more diverse than any other book in our Christian Bible. “Whether or not you have [even] read the text,” Beal writes, “you are probably familiar with many of its scenes, characters, and images”: i.e., the seven seals, the four horsemen, the red dragon, the grapes of wrath, the mark of the beast, the last judgment, the book of life, etc.

While “there is a text tradition that we call the “book” of Revelation, strings of written words, heard and read, etc.… Even that text tradition has lived as many different media” throughout history. “From early Christians reading aloud to handwritten scrolls to codices to illuminated manuscripts to print books to audio recordings,” and now fiction books, whiteboard charts, and movies; the words of Revelation “keep pulling away from each other into new literary and verbal contexts… combining with other images, music, spaces, and things” with no end in sight.

Many are aware of the book of Revelation and the swirl of images, phrases, and ideas which allegedly emerge from it. My fear, however, is that in today’s day and age there are few who take the time to return to the text of Revelation –at least the text that we have– to ascertain how many of these “popular ideas” actually derive from it.

In sum, the book of Revelation has arrested the attention and imagination of countless persons, only some of whom view the book as Scripture intended to form them into the image of Christ.

As we continue to journey through the book of Revelation on Sunday mornings, my hope is that we would reckon with the many uses and receptions of Revelation in popular culture, and that we would take the time as Spirit-filled followers of Jesus, to trace exactly what is said in the text we have.

The book of Revelation is amazing, in the fullest sense of the term, but it is my contention that it is best received by a community of believers intent on having it form them further into the image of Christ.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Deliberate Living

“Distraction is not a new problem tied to our technology. It's something that people have struggled with for centuries… We're not the first to complain about how hard it is to concentrate… Christian monks in the late Roman Empire beat us to it.”

With these words Jamie Kreiner (Professor of History at the University of Georgia) opens her new translation of a selection of John Cassian’s Collationes.

John Cassian was a monk who lived in the Roman Empire during the fourth and early fifth centuries AD. These were still the “early days of Christian monasticism,” notes Kreiner, and Cassian was “part of the generation that sought out the monastic pioneers in Egypt and Palestine to learn from such figures personally.”

Cassian joined his first monastery in Bethlehem in his twenties with his close friend Germanus. From there they embarked on a fifteen-year journey throughout Egypt during which they interviewed and learned from the many elder monks there.

After such travels in the early fifth century, Cassian moved to southern Gaul (France) where his compatriots were hungry for stories of what he’d learned in Egypt. So, in the 420s, he set down the most memorable encounters he’d had in Egypt and “sculpted them into an argument for living ethically, day by day.”

This came to be known as the Collationes, selections of which Kreiner has translated (from the Latin) in her new book, How to Focus: A Monastic Guide for an Age of Distraction (Princeton University Press, 2024).

“One of the central preoccupations of the Collationes is the art of concentration,” writes Kreiner. “This art required many interlocking practices.”

Distraction, in other words, “did not have a single solution.” Monks considered growth in attention and concentration to constitute a form of training. They often liken this training to the work of soldiers, athletes, and artisans.

Such training was necessary “because a monk’s spiritual growth depended on maintaining functional relationships between self and collective, mind and body, technique and reflection.”

Concentration (on God) “wasn’t going to happen simply by resolving to think harder.” It required deliberate training across multiple domains, which over time produced growth.

The writings of Cassian and other monks of this period are well-worth our consideration today.

We live in a world and at a time in which our attention is being constantly bombarded by unwanted yet hard-to-ignore stimuli. This is no less true for Christians whose attempts to focus on Christ are being sabotaged by even so-called “Christian” stimuli: organizations, causes, publishers, app developers, so clamoring for our attention that we’re left distracted from what matters most.

One of the most helpful portions of Kreiner’s translation is a section concerning monks’ goals.

“Every acquired skill and every discipline,” writes Cassian (recalling a conversation he and Germanus shared with a certain Abba Moses in Scetis) “has a scopos and a telos, some immediate goal and some ultimate goal that is particular to it. Practitioners of any skilled craft will gladly and good-naturedly work through all their fatigue and risks and costs as they keep those goals in mind…”

“Take a farmer, for instance, who tirelessly breaks up the soil and plows through the untilled clods of his field over and over again without giving up in the frost and ice or in the withering rays of the sun. He does this while keeping his eye on his immediate goal (scopos) of clearing away all the thorns, purging all the vegetation, and crumbling the earth into a loamy texture. He is certain that this is the only way he'll achieve his ultimate goal (telos): a yield of copious produce and abundant grain that will enable him to live comfortably or even to build up his wealth.”

A farmer’s telos is thus: “to yield an abundant harvest that will enable him to live comfortably and/or build up wealth.” It is that distant point on the horizon toward which the farmer is slowly moving, toward which all his accumulated labor contributes.

The farmer’s scopos, however, varies according to the season, month, week, day, or hour (!). One day it may involve breaking up the soil and plowing the clods of his field. Another day it may involve pulling weeds, fashioning irrigation systems, sharpening tools, repainting barns, etc.

To focus only on one’s telos without any attention to one’s scopos would result in a perpetual state of bewilderment and frustration. Looking only at the distance from where one stands to that point far off on the horizon, would sap anyone of the motivation to act diligently and consistently now.

To focus on one’s scopos, however, action crafted to contribute (eventually) to one’s telos, leads to motivation and resilience in the present. Abba Moses goes on:

“Our own (monastic) profession has particular immediate and ultimate goals, too, and we devote all our labors tirelessly and even enthusiastically to them. This is why fasting doesn't wear us out, why the fatigue from keeping vigil all night appeals to us, why constant reading and meditating on the scriptures is never enough for us, and why incessant work and complete solitude doesn't scare us off.”

Turning to his interviewers John Cassian and his friend Germanus, Abba Moses asks: “What are your immediate (scopos) and ultimate goals (telos)? What is compelling you two to endure all of this so willingly?”

Abba Moses kept trying to elicit a response from them, so they ultimately answered: “the kingdom of God is our ultimate goal.”

“Nicely done!” said Abba Moses. “You've given an incisive answer about your ultimate goal. But before anything else, you should really know what our scopos should be. I'm talking about our immediate goal, the thing we stick to all the time so that we're eventually able to reach the ultimate goal.”

Reflecting on one’s telos and scopos, therefore, is an experience both orienting and rejuvenating. This process, applied initially to the mental habit of concentration or focus, can be broadened, I think, to all areas of human life.

For Christians especially it is imperative that we live life deliberately, engaging in carefully selected habits and actions which contribute to our ultimate goal. The alternative is to live life aimlessly, being “tossed and turned” by the winds of culture, media, and other influences.

I would encourage you, especially if you struggle with discontentment, aimlessness, or bewilderment (at the daily onslaught of stimuli which characterizes our modern world), to ask yourself: “What is my ultimate goal (telos) in life and what immediate goals (scopos) should I thus pursue now?”

If you can identify that point on the horizon toward which you are destined, designed to make progress (telos), you will have the strength to endure those many short stretches (scopos) which combined bring you to that ultimate end.

Habits of concentration and focus –the art of ignoring that which distracts and seeks your attention– are helpful not merely for intellectual growth, but for human flourishing at large.

Heeding Cassian’s advice –to identify one’s telos and scopos, and to resist (as far as is possible) the things which pull you away from such aims– may be precisely what we need to do to combat our world’s many distractions and live into our God-given purpose.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

*This post’s title of course alludes to a famous passage by Henry David Thoreau, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Walden. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854).

What a Baptist Can Be

“In the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. That dream, however, has no hope of being understood apart from King’s Baptist identity. Such an identity, a multigenerational heritage in his case, is the soil from which King’s life grew. “While the world saw him as a marching protest leader, King was first and foremost a preacher.” His international fame may be due to his work in the civil rights movement, but his vision and impact cannot be understood apart from his Baptist identity. 

The “son of a Baptist preacher, grandson of a Baptist preacher, and great-grandson of a Baptist preacher,” King viewed his Baptist identity as an inheritance bequeathed to him by his forefathers.

Martin’s great-grandfather was the Rev. Willis Williams, who preached in antebellum Georgia and contributed to the “emergence of independent black Baptist congregations after the Civil War.”  In 1894 King’s grandfather A. D. Williams accepted the call to pastor what would become a prominent site of religious and social life, the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Not only this but Williams would also assist in founding the National Baptist Convention, which was “the largest African American organization” in the United States at the time. Williams’s son-in-law was none other than Martin Luther King, Sr. (known later as “Daddy King”) who assumed the Ebenezer pastorate in 1931, when his son Martin was two years old. “From the time of his birth in 1929, then, Ebenezer [Baptist Church] was often at the center of Martin Jr.’s world.” From this small Baptist church, King, Jr. drank in its religion as if it were “his mother’s milk.” Everything that would follow from his life can be sourced back to that congregation.

Despite his fated destiny of ministerial service, the young King required convincing before officially entering the pastorate. Martin graduated high school at the precocious age of fifteen (1944) and went on to study at Morehouse College in his hometown of Atlanta. Despite his ministerial heritage, the young King was reluctant to enter the ministry due to the rampant “‘emotionalism,’ the hand-clapping, [the] ‘amen-ing,’ and shouting of the Black church.”

While “deep down... [King] wanted to become a minister... he believed that there was an oversupply of ‘unintellectual’ and ‘untrained ministers’ in the Black church.”  However, two men among the faculty of Morehouse College –Dr. Benjamin Mays (Preacher-President) and Dr. George Kelsey (Director of the Department of Religion)– showed the skeptical undergraduate that it was possible to preach and serve the church in ways that are “intellectually respectable,” “emotionally satisfying,” and even “socially relevant.”  King then, intent on assuming the mantle of pastor-scholar, decided in his junior year of college (age 17) to “give himself to the ministry.” In 1947, Martin Luther King, Jr. was thus ordained by his local church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta, Georgia.

King, Jr. would go on to complete a B.D. at Crozer Theological Seminary (1951) and a Ph.D. at Boston University (1955). In Boston, he met the woman whom he would marry, the intellectually and artistically astute Coretta Scott, who bore him four children and went on to found the King Center. While finishing his doctoral dissertation, King assumed the pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama (1954). In the still segregated South, King was immediately drawn towards civil rights, becoming a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).  In 1955, he accepted leadership of “the first great nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States,” the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, begun by the now famous Rosa Parks.

Two years later, in 1957, King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership conference, “an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement.”  Over the next eleven years, King would travel across the country, speaking to churches and other large gatherings, garnering support (financial, physical, legal) for what had become the largest single effort at civil rights since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.

One of King’s most popular works is Why We Can’t Wait, a memoir recounting his civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. It had been 100 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation yet people of color in Birmingham were far from free. It was the most segregated city in America at this time, and it was there that the young Martin (34 years old) went to work.

Why We Can’t Wait narrates the successful non-violent demonstrations of thousands of protesters led by their commander, Martin Luther King, Jr. The book includes King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and concludes with an account of the iconic March on Washington (August 1963).

Ten Baptist distinctives emerge from this work: social involvement; ecumenism/diversity; freedom/independence; the priesthood of all believers; the transformative power of preaching; civil disobedience; religious freedom; centrality of faith; congregational polity; and responsibility. By tracing these Baptist distinctives in Why We Can’t Wait, one can appreciate with greater precision how Baptist Martin Luther King, Jr. really is.

First, let us consider the distinctive of social justice. To be a Baptist means to be concerned not merely with an ethereal, heavenly “afterlife,” but with applying the love of Jesus to concrete sociocultural issues. This distinctive emerges quite early in Why We Can’t Wait as King recounts the participation of Southern Black ministers in his fight for racial justice in Alabama. He writes, “Black ministers, with a growing awareness that the true witness of a Christian life is the projection of a social gospel, had accepted leadership in the fight for racial justice.” Later, King declares that “only a ‘dry as dust’ religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell.”

The second distinctive that emerges is the notion of ecumenism or diversity. This can either refer to Baptists’ relationship with those of other traditions/faiths or the diverse internal, interdenominational makeup of Baptists of various sorts. King describes his movement’s attempt to gain support from a wide variety of persons. He writes, “We felt it was vital to get the support of key people across the nation. We corresponded with the seventy-five religious leaders of all faiths who had joined us in the Albany movement.” 

Third, we see the distinctive of freedom or independence. This impulse towards freedom and independence oozes from every nook and cranny of King, Jr.’s life and work. King “pleaded for... strong, firm leadership by the Black minister [in the civil rights movement], pointing out that he is freer, more independent, than any other person in the community.” The freedom that characterizes Baptists when coupled with the independence of Blacks such as King, produced a fiery sense of resolution making no goal unattainable for Black Baptists.

Related to this is a fourth distinctive, the priesthood of all believers. Not only are Baptist congregations autonomous regarding their own governance. Baptist congregants exercise autonomy and responsibility towards one another. One illustrative quote comes late in Why We Can’t Wait as King reflects on the work they accomplished in Birmingham. He writes, “It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people. Of course, there were generals, as there must be in every army. But the command post was in the bursting hearts of millions of Black Americans.”

Connected to this is congregational polity. Commenting on the notion of a voting bloc, King, Jr. writes, “Development as a conscious bloc would give them more flexibility, more bargaining power, more clarity and more responsibility in assessing candidates and programs. Moreover a deeper involvement as a group in political life will bring them more independence.” While not exactly the same as congregational polity, King’s vision of a voting bloc draws its inspiration from this core Baptist distinctive.

The sixth distinctive concerns the power of preaching. One of the most powerful quotes from Why We Can’t Wait comes in the same context as many of the previous quotes: King’s attempt to garner support from ministers, professionals, and other influential persons throughout Birmingham and the neighboring regions. King traveled nearly six million miles delivering impassioned homilies and speeches aimed at garnering support for their civil rights cause. He writes, “Somehow God gave me the power to transform the resentments, the suspicions, the fears and the misunderstanding into faith and enthusiasm. I spoke from my heart, and out of each meeting came firm endorsements and pledges of participation and support.”

A seventh distinctive is that of civil disobedience. On April 10, 1963, the city government of Birmingham tried to stifle the demonstrations of King and his campaigners by issuing “a court injunction directing us,” in the words of King, “to cease our activities until our right to demonstrate had been argued in court.”  Knowing that the corrupt bureaucracy of the judicial system of Birmingham would forestall any efforts toward desegregation, Martin and his associates, after much “prolonged and prayerful consideration,” decided to do something they “had never done” before: they “disobeyed a court order.”  Such disobedience was neither impulsive nor without thought, but was “discussed as far back as... March [1963].”

Related to this is an eighth distinctive: religious freedom. In reflecting upon the impact of the Birmingham non-violent protests and looking forward to civil rights progress in the future, King writes the following: “One aspect of the civil-rights struggle that receives little attention is the contribution it makes to the whole society. In winning rights for themselves Blacks produce substantial benefits for the nation.” 

The ninth distinctive is responsibility (to each other). In the Baptist tradition, each individual congregant is responsible both to and for each other. Baptists are, thus, responsible for providing spiritual support, encouragement, and care to other members of the congregation (who reciprocate such care and support). Continuing on from King’s previous quote, he writes: “Eventually the civil-rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial injustice. It will have enlarged the concept of brotherhood to a vision of total interrelatedness.” 

Last but not least, we arrive at a tenth distinctive: the centrality of faith for Black Baptists. A major part of King’s non-violent campaign in Birmingham was voluntary incarceration. “Fill up the jails,” King thought, inspired by the Indian non-violent revolutionary Mahatma Gandhi. The movement had amassed thousands of dollars in bail funds as a result of King’s speaking engagements throughout the country. Supporters could thus “go to jail” (as a statement) trusting that they would be released shortly thereafter.

These ten distinctives taken together show that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist to his very core. His Baptistness helps provide a grid through which to interpret and understand his contributions to American society and religion. King’s heart for his Black brothers and sisters coupled with his Baptist sensibilities has achieved more for the kingdom of God than anyone else in the 20th century. Baptists today can thus extend King’s legacy by remembering their roots and following God’s heart, wherever it leads.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor 

*This is an excerpted version of a paper I wrote entitled: “What a Baptist Can Be: The Religious Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr.” (for AIM’s “American Baptist History & Polity” course). If you would like access to the full paper (with bibliographic references), please contact me at jonah@freeportbaptist.org.

Our Story

“Theology at the very least then is biography. And biography at its best is theology.”

At present, I have the privilege of serving on the American Baptist Churches of Maine’s Committee on the Ministry. This committee features representatives from each association in the region and is primarily responsible for reviewing candidates for ordination in the American Baptist Churches of Maine (ABCOM; a region of ABC-USA). The committee is engaged in other ministry-related endeavors, one of which is an Orientation to ABCOM. Part of this orientation entails a brief historical survey of the Baptist presence in Maine, and my task is to draft the survey transcript.

While the orientation is primarily geared toward incoming ministers, it will be offered to all who would like to learn more about what it means to be an American Baptist in Maine. I would like to share a draft of the transcript with you, entitled “Our Story: The History of Baptists in Maine.”

It is my hope that knowing our history –truly the history of God’s work through Maine Baptists– will help you partner with God in the word He is doing. As this is a work-in-progress, I invite any feedback to be shared directly (jonah@freeportbaptist.org).

Baptist theologian James McClendon once wrote, “Christian beliefs are not simply propositions to be catalogued or juggled like truth-functions in a computer. Rather, they are living convictions which give shape to real lives and real communities. Theology at the very least then is biography. And biography at its best is theology.” The best way to understand Baptist identity and theology then is to look at Baptist history.

“Getting a foothold for a permanent settlement on the coast of Maine was a long and arduous task,” writes Halton Merrill. “Sailors and fishermen had visited Maine’s islands and coves for nearly two centuries before the first settlement was attempted. Such settlement was doomed to failure, because of hardship, severe weather, and resistance from the Natives.” Despite such repeated failure, however, “the Maine settler was determined.” Puritanism was established in Maine as early as 1652, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony purchased the province of Maine from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Anglican clergymen served the province until 1652; not until Maine became an official state in 1820, was greater religious freedom made possible.

A Baptist church had been established in Boston in the 1600s. Those whose beliefs differed from Puritan theology, however, faced such difficulty that many looked to settle in other areas to practice their religion. William Screven from the Baptist church in Boston thus ventured north to Kittery, Maine but met stifling persecution there. Despite such persecution, however, enough Baptists gathered in Kittery to warrant the formation of a Baptist Church. Thus, the first Baptist church in Maine was formed in Kittery in 1681.

Inflamed with evangelistic and missionary zeal, Hezekiah Smith of Haverhill, Massachusetts later travelled into New Hampshire and Maine preaching at whatever homes would welcome him. In 1772, he arrived at North Yarmouth, where he preached at a number of homes leading to the establishment of a Baptist church there. As Baptist churches began to arise in Maine, they asked for help from the Haverhill Baptist church in Massachusetts; and a man by the name of Isaac Case was sent to establish churches and associations in Maine. Case was sent on a preaching circuit throughout the state; and he and lay preacher, Elder Potter, helped found churches in the Nobleboro, Alna, and Bowdoin area (to mention just a few). Between 1804-1850 over 120 churches were planted in Maine, and many trace their origin to the work of Case and Potter.

Maine Baptists didn’t want to be known simply as “frontier preachers.” They wanted to show the world that they were fully vested, serious, and educated. Education was of vital importance in Maine’s early Baptist history. Pastors began to see the need for formal theological education among the clergy and the laity. John Tripp was called as pastor of Hebron Community Church and while there he founded Hebron Academy (elementary and high school) and Waterville Classical Institute. In time these would join with Hootton Academy and would eventually become Colby University (now Colby College in Waterville, ME).

During the Second Great Awakening (early 1800s), the famous Anglican evangelist George Whitfield preached in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and was heard by a man named Benjamin Randall. Randall later preached throughout New Hampshire working especially among the Baptist churches there. Randall’s preaching was not Reformed/Calvinistic like many Baptists in New England (Regular Baptists) but emphasized God’s offer of salvation and one’s free will in accepting it. Randall’s churches became known as Free Will Baptist Churches, and over time Free Will Baptists and Regular (Calvinistic) Baptists came together (1912-1916) to form the United Baptist Convention of Maine. Such unity gave rise to new ventures, such as Bates College, the first Free Will Baptist educational institution.

The founding of educational institutions was very important for Maine Baptists. Several missionaries were developed at the Waterville Institute, including George Dana Boardman, a key figure who helped develop the Maine Baptist Missionary society in 1804. After being trained in Waterville, Boardman travelled to Burma for missionary work. He died on the mission field and his widow married the famous Baptist Adoniram Judson.

After Boardman, the next Maine Baptist to engage in foreign missions was Sarah Cummings of North Yarmouth. Cummings was the first single woman appointed as a foreign missionary in Baptist history. She was baptized in 1824 and sailed to Burma the year after Boardman’s death (1832). Her missionary activity was so fruitful that an account of her work was written in the Burmese language and was published by the mission press at Rangoon. After serving the Karens for 16 months, Cummings died of jungle fever in August 1834.

What we now call ABCOM was once called the Maine Baptist Missionary Society. This society raised funds for foreign and local missions. A man by the name of John Mason Peck helped raise money to reach Native Americans with the Gospel. Moses and Thomas Merrill (of FBC Sedgwick) later travelled to Michigan and Nebraska to minister to Native Americans there. Such outreach efforts helped unite Maine’s separate societies into one unified missionary society.

As associations began to develop from 1820 on, concerns arose regarding a variety of social issues. Churches thus sought the advice of other Baptists in such matters. As issues became more public and Baptists distinguished themselves, societies began to form within the Baptist movement. One of the first societies, the Baptist Publication Society, distributed literature/material to churches so that congregants could receive proper Biblical and theological instruction. Other societies include the Abolitionist Society, which arose during the Civil War years. Its purpose was to provide information, Biblical and cultural, about what was happening within the US slave trade and how it needed to end. An Educational Society also arose, which sought to support the various educational institutions which had arisen in Maine. A Temperance Society even developed, as the consumption of alcohol was a matter of public and religious discussion.

“Nine full pages were required in the 1929 Yearbook to describe the missionary activities of Maine Baptist women. The emphasis upon their work had come a long way in twenty-five years,” writes Walter Cook. Until 1907 there was no state women’s missionary organization. This changed, however, on October 3 of that year, when articles concerning the formation of a State Women’s Missionary Society were discussed and adopted in Portland. Anna Sargent Hunt was the society’s first president and each of the three phases of missionary work (foreign, home, and state missions) was represented by its own secretary. The work of this society was varied and fruitful and became a pillar of Maine Baptist life.

The history of Baptists in Maine is an unfinished story. It requires you, the next generation of Maine Baptists, to take the baton held and passed by our forebears, and to run your leg of the race with boldness and faith. We welcome you to this mission field that is our great state of Maine. And we hope that in time your names will feature in our story too. Godspeed.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Eternal Life

“He became what we are so that he might make us what he is.”

While I am told that I live in the 21st century (I am still not convinced), I spend a considerable amount of time in the first six centuries. Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Origen of Alexandria: such have become dear travelling companions on this journey we call the Christian life.

Sometimes my academic interest in early/late antique Christianity seems extracurricular, given the very present task of pastoral ministry. At other times, however (such as now), it seems utterly central.

Right now, I have the privilege of reviewing Andrew Hofer’s (OP) recent book, The Power of Patristic Preaching (CUA Press, 2023).

In this marvelously written volume, Hofer traces the lives and preaching philosophies of seven ancient Christian figures: Origen, Ephrem, Gregory (of Nazianzus), Chrysostom, Augustine, Leo, and Gregory (the Great). With each figure, he begins with an outline of their personal life and proceeds to examine the distinct flavor of their preaching, always with an eye toward present renewal.

Uniting these seven profiles are three touchstones, as he calls them, which run through the book’s argument and inform each figure’s contributions. These touchstones are incarnation, proclamation, and deification. For the purposes of this post, and given the season we are in, I would like to focus on just one of these touchstones, that is: deification.

“Deification (theōsis),” writes Hofer, “is attaining likeness to God and union with him as far as is possible.” He goes on: “Created in the image of God, human beings are re-created to resemble God during this life and ultimately in the glory of heaven.” Early Christian preaching, Hofer notes, “vividly conveys our experience of being taken up into Christ in a variety of ways.”

In the 180s (AD), Irenaeus of Lyons famously wrote, “Jesus Christ, on account of his immense love, became what we are so that he would perfect us to be what he is.”

Clement of Alexandria writing toward the end of Irenaeus’s life expressed a series of similar sentiments. His papal successor, whom you may know, Athanasius, famously agreed: “He became what we are so that he might make us what he is” (On the Incarnation, early 300s).

Deification, divinization, or theōsis, are hallmarks of Eastern Orthodox theology, but such doctrines have made little headway in the Western Church. I believe that especially at this time of year we would do well as Western Christians to pay attention to the doctrine of theōsis.

Theōsis, according to Irenaeus, does not mean that humans become “little gods” but simply that they become “like God” by partaking of the divine nature in Christ (2 Pet 1:4). The incarnation of God the Word –what we as Christians celebrate on December 25th–re-heads (recapitulates) humanity by restoring God’s image within us.

Irenaeus’s work, Against Heresies, is a particularly revealing source for (some) early Christian understandings of theōsis. Therein he claims that “the Lord Jesus imparted God to human beings by means of the Spirit”; that “he attached humanity to God by Christ’s own incarnation”; and that “he bestowed upon humanity true immortality by means of communion with God the Father” (5.1).

He later writes that through Jesus Christ believers “partake of the glory of God the Father” (5.35), and enter a kingdom “which is the beginning of incorruption,” in which believers “share in the divine nature” (5.32). Through union with the incarnate Word then, which comes through faith, “what was mortal is conquered and swallowed up by immortality, and the corruptible by incorruptibility” (4.38).

Irenaeus thus believes along with many others that the Incarnation restores in us the image of God. Christ’s Incarnation “showed forth God’s image truly” and “re-established that image surely, assimilating human beings to the invisible Father through means of the visible Word” (5.16). According to the doctrine of theōsis, as believers are united to Christ, they share in God’s divine nature and become more and more like God.

One aspect of theōsis which I find particularly helpful for church ministry is mentioned by Hofer in the introduction to his book: “Because of this mystery early Christians understood that they could find Christ in their graced brothers and sisters in particular ways.” As one reads in Col. 1:27, “the mystery which was hidden for ages has now been made manifest: it is Christ in you.” Hofer explains further: “All the baptized then are to be Christ’s presence and to show him in the world.”

This process of theōsis is roughly synonymous with the process of Christian formation. Paul Blowers thus writes, “A Christian is formed over time through multiple means and disciplines, and not simply in a single, momentary act of intellectual assent.”

While that single momentary act may reveal the point at which you are united to Christ (initially), the process of living-into that union through study, prayer, service, and fellowship, is what makes you gradually come to resemble God.

As we look forward to Christmas this year, let us reflect then upon the true meaning of the Incarnation: “All things were made through the Word but that which was made from within the Word was life,” God’s own life breathed into us (John 1:3-4; cf., Gen. 2:7).

From the beginning human beings were uniquely animated by the breath, the life of God. From the very beginning we were meant to experience a quality of life equal to that of God Himself.

This does not mean we will become “gods” which others ought to worship and praise, no. It does mean, however, that the life God experiences in unbroken unity, love, and action is the life we are destined to share.

In the Incarnation, the capacity for such life has been restored to each and every one of us. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of such life (in concentrated form) and through union with him we can share in it too.

Eternal life starts now.

And it is not just an infinitely extended version of the natural mode of life we all know. It is a sharing of God’s very own life, a life of relentlessly selfless love and care.

May we catch a glimpse of that life this Christmas, but may that merely be the beginning, of a drawn-out process of together coming to resemble… our God.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Like a Snowflake

The Baptist gathering –be it a prayer meeting, Bible study, business meeting, or worship service– is, in many ways, like a snowflake: completely unique every time.

Yesterday I preached a sermon in which I compared the recycling of cells in the human body with the recycling of generations in the body of Christ. Just as one’s precise cellular makeup at any given moment is irreplicable at future moments, so it is (in a sense) for the body of Christ.

This analogy is so useful because it makes room for newness and sameness, both of which we see quite clearly in human bodies and the body of Christ.

If you were to take a snapshot of your cellular makeup right now and take another every seven years, you’d think you were looking at a different (new) human being each time. Despite such cellular regeneration, however, throughout the years this remains the same person, the same body.

Newness and sameness can exist together.

Baptists, among other things, are distinguished by their congregational polity and spiritual spontaneity. What I mean is: rather than receiving key pronouncements and decisions by priests, bishops, presbyteries, and the like, Baptists come together at the prompting of the Holy Spirit to discern the will of God afresh whenever they gather.

The business meeting is thus a sacred rite for Baptists, especially for small(er) congregations in New England (20-80 people). Patterned after the local meetings of villages, hamlets, and other northern townships, such meetings reveal the heart of a local community.

For Baptists, such gatherings are not limited to the business meeting, but may include prayer meetings, Bible studies, and even Sunday morning worship. What distinguishes the Baptist meeting, however, is that like the cellular snapshot, each gathering is unique. 

At this point, I’d like to introduce a new image, given plummeting temperatures and northern flurries (in the north): the Baptist gathering, in many ways, is like a snowflake.

My son and I checked out an interesting volume from the library which details the fascinating science of the snowflake. While some contend that certain forms of snowflakes can look exactly alike, the vast majority (represented in other forms) are completely unique.

The Baptist gathering –be it a prayer meeting, Bible study, business meeting, or worship service– is, in many ways, like a snowflake: completely unique every time.

While we worship the same God, interpret the same Scriptures, and comprise the same Church, the cellular snapshot at each of these gatherings is always just a little bit different.

This phenomenon was expressed at a recent meeting of ABCOM’s Committee on the Ministry (ABCOM = American Baptist Churches of Maine). Al Fletcher, the region’s executive minister, shared the following (I think ‘spirit-filled’) remarks:

“Whenever a group of believers comes together at a particular moment in time to either engage the Scriptures or discern God’s will, that gathering at that moment is unique and irreplicable.”

In other words: Let’s say ‘that congregation’ decides to gather the following week, but some from the previous week are not there, and others who were not there the week before, are present now. Not only this, but with the week that has gone by, the people who were present last time and are present again, are now slightly different people, with new experiences, memories, and knowledge acquired over the last seven days.

Since individuals are constantly changing and the attendance roll is rarely the same (among congregations larger than 20), each gathering then is just a little bit different.

Al went even further in saying: “the church that met the week before is not the church that is meeting right now, and the church that will meet next week will be a new church, etc., etc.” Rather than being rigid and uniform through time, the Baptist congregation is like a snowflake: completely unique every time.

To return to the image of the organism, then, its cellular makeup is constantly changing, as old cells fade, current ones change, and new ones find their place.

Perhaps this is disconcerting to you, to think of the church as ever-changing, in flux, and never fixed. However, like a human body, to be in a state of change, of constant newness, doesn’t preclude continuity. It doesn’t preclude a state of sameness.

We wouldn’t call “Cellular Snapshot 1” (at seven years) and “Cellular Snapshot 2” (at fourteen years) different people. While the cells may look different, they still comprise the same, continuous person, identity. So, it is with the Church.

Because the body of Christ is comprised of ever-changing Spirit-filled humans, who rarely come together as the exact same collection every time, this allows for both newness and sameness, at the same time.

Thus, despite the fluid nature of our existence and the unpredictable attendance of each meeting, believers come together full of the same Spirit, in pursuit of the same God.

While each meeting may unveil a slightly different church (cycle), in reality it’s the same Church (body). Cells may be constantly cycling but the body remains the same.

This, I think, is a vital reminder for believers everywhere, who may be tempted to emphasize one pole or the other.

Is the church an unchanging, rigid, and fixed set of beliefs, traditions, and opinions that persist unmodified through all of time? Or is the church an everchanging, unstable, and fluid movement which must alter its outlook with every new generation (cycle)?

Like a body, as Christ’s body, the Church holds room for both: while its cells may constantly cycle, the body remains the same.

Whenever a local congregation gathers, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, with all present being equal, you never know what God’s going to do.

At the same time, whenever a congregation gathers, in possession of an unchanging Spirit and in pursuit of an unchanging God, you know exactly what God’s going to do ( = what He’s always done).

My hope is that you would find life today in the beauty and complexity that is the body of Christ. Trust deeply, then, in God’s stable sameness, while not forgetting that like a snowflake, He is always doing something… new.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

What Sustains You?

“For me, the path to faith has been rocky and my steps uneven. I have faced my share of doubts and fears and anxieties. My trajectory is rarely straight and not always upward…Yet what sustains me is a sense of divine presence…

What sustains me is the knowledge that I am not alone on this pilgrimage, but am in the company of friends who will pick me up, dust me off, and point me in the right direction.

What sustains me is a suspicion that there is still enchantment in the world –in the air on top of a mountain, in the crunch of leaves beneath a harvest moon, in the dazzling colors on the flanks of a rainbow trout, in the sound of wind brushing past pine needles.

What sustains me is the laughter of my sons, the delight of love and companionship, the conviction that the journey brings its own rewards, that holiness somehow is imbedded in the process itself.

I believe because of the epiphanies, small and large, that have intersected my path, small, discrete moments of grace when I have sensed a kind of superintending presence outside of myself.

I believe because these moments –a kind word, an insight, an anthem on Easter morning, a chill in the spine– are too precious to discard…

I believe because, for me, the alternative to belief is far too daunting.”

With these words Randall Balmer closes his brief memoir, “Notes from a Road Less Traveled” (Perspectives in Religious Studies, 2023). Balmer currently holds the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth College, the oldest endowed professorship at the Ivy League institution. He has had quite the “spiritual journey,” as he describes over the course of his essay, but through it all he has maintained vibrant faith.

I can resonate deeply with Balmer’s sentiments, especially his “sense of divine presence.” In conversations with those who don’t identify as Christians or identify specifically as agnostics or atheists, I’m sometimes asked the very question Balmer implies in his series of “I believe” statements:

How or why do you still believe?

In my own “rocky” and “uneven” journey, I’ve stepped awfully close to the edge at times. I’ve stumbled upon loose stones, stopped to recover my balance, and wondered when the next stumble would be my last.

With Balmer I can say with confidence that what has sustained my faith is that subtle, unfading sense of presence which has haunted me every step of my way.

If I pin the stability of my faith to any other, more empirical, foundation, the stones beneath my feet slide away. It’s the constant yet subtle sense of presence, divine presence, which for me has made all the difference.

Balmer goes on to write about the “epiphanies, small and large, that have intersected my path, the small, discrete moments of grace when I’ve sensed a presence outside of myself.”

He believes, he still believes, because “such moments are too precious to discard –a kind word, an insight, an anthem on Easter morning, a chill in the spine.” He believes because “the alternative,” he says, “is far too daunting.”

God –as I step back to reflect– seems to grace our winding paths with small, at times fleeting, glints of light. He provides sheen to our dullness, glow to our dimness, light to the caverns of life.

Such glints of grace rarely remain. Yet they remind us of a presence, an awe-inspiring yet heart-warming presence, which in the end makes all the difference.

As we complete our series in the book of Exodus as a church, I am struck by the predominance of journey or pilgrimage language in the story. The people of Israel begin their redeemed life with an anything-but-straight 40-year journey. They fear, they doubt, they grumble along the way, yet their God remains present all throughout.

While we often think their life only began once they’d settled in the land of Canaan (the destination), it’s the journey, its the wandering, its the 40-years of arduous and trial-filled travel, which constitutes the true life of God’s people.

It’s no wonder that Jesus of Nazareth refers to himself as “the Way” (John 14:6; and this would become a popular label for Christianity before it was known as such). The Christian life, like that of Israel, is a journey, it’s a life of following someone (Jesus), which implies movement, progress, travel.

It’s a life in which we like the Israelites make our way through long stretches of uncertainty, fear, trial, and loss. It’s a life that is rocky; that’s uneven, full of doubts, fears, and anxieties. But it’s a life also full of presence, the inarticulable yet palpable presence of God.

Our God, in sum, is a God of presence. From the very beginning He’s been present to his people. He has entered our meandering journey, felt our fears and frustrations; he’s even limped along with the stragglers in the back.

In the end I can’t promise you’ll feel the presence as Moses, Elijah, or the Twelve Disciples did. But I can and will hope for this:

“That in the darkness there be a blessing.

That in the shadows there be a welcome.

That in the night you be encompassed

by the Love that knows your name”

(Jan Richardson).

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Only One Thing

It is my hope that Christians today, like Wendell Berry over the past half-century, would slow down, simplify, and focus.

In his classic book, The Contemplative Pastor, Eugene Peterson writes:

I enjoy reading the poet-farmer Wendell Berry. Every time Berry speaks of farm and land, I insert parish or church. Berry talks about what I have tried to practice in my congregation, because one of the genius aspects of pastoral ministry is locality. Like Berry am I willing to spend 50 years reclaiming this land ( = church) with these people?

That is the question all Christians must ask.

Berry’s essays may be among the most helpful guides for disciples of Jesus today. In one particular essay, “The Gift of Good Land,” written (presciently) in 1979, his words are particularly lucid. Berry writes:

The most necessary thing in agriculture ( = Christian ministry) is not to invent new technologies or methods, nor to achieve breakthroughs, but to determine what tools and methods are appropriate to specific people, places, and needs, and to apply them correctly.

He goes on:

Application is the crux, because no two farms ( = churches) or farmers ( = Christians) are alike; no two fields ( = congregations) are alike. The changing shape or topography of the land ( = a local community or neighborhood) makes for differences of the most formidable kind.

Berry continues:

The bigger and more expensive, the more heroic our “methods” are, the harder they are to apply considerately and conservingly. Application is the most important work, but is also the most modest, complex, difficult, and long.

To use knowledge and tools ( = disciplines/practices) in a particular place with good long-term results is not heroic. It is not a grand action visible for a long distance or a long time. It is a small action, more complex and difficult, more skillful and responsible, more whole and enduring, than most grand actions.

And here we reach the mountain-peak:

It comes of a willingness to devote oneself to work that perhaps only the eye of Heaven will see in its full intricacy and excellence. Perhaps the real work, like prayer and charity, must be done in secret.

Christians serving in ministry today, like farmers in Berry’s time (and even today), are being pulled toward grand, ‘heroic’, visible methods, technologies, and outcomes. They’re expected to keep up, to stay current, to offer all the amenities which draw outsiders in. They’re being sold an industrial model of ministry, one shaped by the same forces as industrial agriculture, which screams, “Bigger is better, growth (in scope) is the goal, success can be visibly measured.”

Methods, tools, technologies, and resources: this is becoming the lingua franca of Christian ministry. Rather than slow, focused, considerate attention to human beings in their particularity –which seldom yields visibly heroic results– instead, we’re being sold abstraction, and I would add... distraction.

The Johns, the Lucys, the Tims, the Susans have been abstracted into congregants, parishioners, volunteer resources. Intimate conversation and deep reflective interaction are called programs, offerings, initiatives. Sermons are focused less on the beauty and love of God as displayed in Jesus Christ and they’re focusing more on practical takeaways (a cheap version of “application,” distinct from Berry’s meaning above), such as: how to share your faith at work, how to keep your marriage healthy, how to assemble an effective team, etc.

We’re being sold methods, strategies, and tools, which treat God’s Holy Bride as raw material, human resources, abstractions. We’re also being distracted.

The number of emails, advertisements, promotional offers I receive from parachurch organizations or ministry resourcing groups is staggering. While such groups often mean well, their collective efforts at making churches aware of their mission sometimes distracts rather than serves the work of ministry. Christians of all walks of life (not just ministry leaders) are bombarded by Christian media outlets, grasping for their time, their attention, their focus.

Contemplation is a spiritual discipline which has characterized the Christian tradition from its very beginning in the life of Jesus. Defined variously as “looking thoughtfully at something for a long time; deep reflective thought; a state of being thought about or planned,” contemplation as a discipline (and as a mark of life) is being threatened all over by well-meaning Christians today.

Taking time to focus thoughtfully on one thing every day is not intrinsically what I’m promoting. Like Sabbath, such periods of contemplation are meant to form in us a contemplative mode of life for all times.

Taking 10 minutes in the morning to read a single verse of Scripture and think carefully about it, is meant to gradually form in us a kind of contemplative focus which extends beyond that 10-minute period. Establishing a rhythm in which we push away distractions and focus on one thing for some length of time, is meant to shape us into focused, contemplative people for all times.  

It is my hope that Christians today, like Wendell Berry over the past half-century, would slow down, simplify, and focus.

We need to focus on the particularity of Jesus and the particularity of the human souls he’s entrusted to our care. We need to safeguard and protect our attention, not letting it be captured by every new initiative or technology in Christian media and resourcing-organizations. We must gather as small flocks of disciples to deliberately focus on Jesus –just once (or twice) a week– letting such a practice form in us a posture of focus for the times in-between.

The life of the Christian disciple, I believe, is quite simple. With an eye toward all the extras which crowd our vision, such a statement may seem trite and disingenuous. If focused on Jesus alone, on his soul-softening beauty, his life-ordering authority, his heart-warming grace, such a statement will appear both simple and true (I hope).

The story of Mary & Martha in Luke’s Gospel is rather troubling (understandably) for people who have much work to do to sustain the lives of those around them. I do not believe that Jesus in any way disparages the work Martha is doing to sustain her household. As a parable, however, as an image, a symbol, of the ‘net of distraction’ in which the Church finds itself at present, its message is simple and, I think, worth heeding:

Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to his teaching. Martha, however, was distracted by many household duties. So, she went up to Jesus and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to work alone? Tell her then to help me.” But Jesus answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her (Luke 10:38-42).

May we with Mary choose the good portion, focusing intently on Jesus Christ. The time is too short, friends, to be distracted by many things, when in truth only one thing is necessary.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

A Traditioned People

One of the biggest threats to American Christianity is our failure to acknowledge our history.

This coming Fall, I have the privilege of co-teaching a course, “American Baptist History & Polity,” offered through the American Baptist Churches of Maine’s Institute for Ministry. To prepare for this course, over the past few months, I have occupied myself quite intensely with the history of the Baptist tradition.

The book I am currently reading, Baptists through the Centuries: A History of a Global People (David Bebbington) offers a masterful single volume treatment of the origins and development of Baptists worldwide. Bebbington writes about debates surrounding baptism, state involvement in religion, revivalism, and the famous controversies over liberalism and fundamentalism, all of which feature in the movement’s rather short (nearly 400 year) history.

In reading about the history of the Baptist tradition, I am constantly reminded of that proverbial maxim from Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing new under the sun” (1:9b). This isn’t to say that all the debates we are having today –over human sexuality, faith and politics, the role of the state in religion, etc.– have already taken place in these exact forms. No, of course not.

It is to say, rather, that looking at the grand sweep of human history, the kinds of debates we are having today, the viewpoints we have difficulty shedding, the tendencies we have trouble even noticing, fit within the historical landscape. They do.

The very point I am trying to make is one that has been made already in the philosophical movement known as historicism. Without boring you with a full retinue of 19/20th century German philosophers, historicism can be helpfully defined as:

“The belief that an adequate understanding of the nature of anything and an assessment of its value can be gained by considering it in terms of the place it occupied and the role it played within history.”

Everything that is happening today, everything we’re debating, fighting for, losing sleep over, makes sense, given the social, political, and intellectual forces of our 21st century reality.

Why do young(er) liberals have such trouble relating to old(er) conservatives? Why are certain interpretations or questions off-limits in certain circles? Why do we value one kind of religious expression and disparage another? These questions can be (mostly) answered via history.

This, of course, puts an awful lot of stock in history-writing, and becomes a bit iffy given how bias-inflected all history-writing is. However, in studying the history of the Baptist tradition, I find myself saying over and over again, “That’s why we’re having this debate! That’s why they think the way they do! That’s why I feel so strongly about this,” etc., etc., etc.

Failing to attend to our history, or presuming we can live ahistorically –i.e., immune to the powerful effects of social, political, and intellectual forces outside our control– results in a Christian faith that is arrogant and, might I say, dangerous.

It leads to a faith that supposes one can reach over thousands of years of tradition, interpretive habits, theological leanings, and reach into the pure, unvarnished treasure-trove of Scripture, unstained by what lies between.

It leads to a faith that supposes we are the ones getting it right, that the personal, spontaneous relationship-focused religion of modern America (taking just one example) is genuine while the formal, ritualistic, more-academic faith of our European forebears, is not (please bear with my simplifications).

It leads to a faith that supposes we possess the only reading of the Word of God and that to debate such a reading is to deny both Scripture and orthodoxy as a whole.

Such an approach to religion, however –an ahistorical approach, if we can call it that– can itself be explained (I think) via history.

I won’t burden you with a list of titles charting the history of American Evangelicalism. But like every other trend of human activity, every other behavioral pattern, every other observable distinctive, the faith of Evangelical Christians in modern America exists squarely within history.

All branches of Christianity throughout the ages are culturally inflected, generational expressions of a community’s lived faith in Jesus Christ. Every movement within the history of the church is stitched like a quilt-square next to movements which came before and after, surrounded by the fabric of culture all around.  

The way we are, the thoughts we think, the questions we ask; they make sense given the grand sweep of history. But now that we know this: how ought we to live our distinctly modern American Christian lives?

Well, first, I’d say: take the time to know your tradition and its history. Perhaps this means admitting for the very first time that you have a tradition and live within it.

Discover your tradition, your movement, and the swirling of cultural and religious forces which gave rise to whatever “ism” that is. (And for all my non-denominational friends, I hate to burst your bubble, but yours is a tradition too!)

Then, I encourage you to recognize and study other traditions and their histories. Start by befriending some Lutherans, Anglicans, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics. Read about their history, their debates, their councils.

Look at their values and tendencies in relation to the movements and forces which shape their history. And rather than esteeming one as better or “more right” than another, take the time to appreciate the unique particularity of their tradition.

Everyone exists within a tradition; we might as well just admit it. The best we can do, then, is name our tradition, learn what we can about it, and appreciate the diverse traditions of others.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” says the author of Ecclesiastes. All the more reason, then, to take the time to observe what is under the sun, and to appreciate exactly where we (and others) stand beneath it.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

No Contradiction

God’s sovereignty and human freedom: how can we reconcile these themes?

Since at least the period of Augustine (ca. 354-430 AD) Christians have debated this topic. How can we say that God is sovereign and in control of all things while human beings enjoy freedom of will? Doesn’t complete divine sovereignty require incomplete freedom on the part of human beings? And doesn’t complete human freedom require incomplete sovereignty on the part of God?

It would be arrogant and naïve (to say the least) to think that I could resolve this dilemma in the span of one blog post. I do not expect to do this. What I’d like to do, rather, is present a different way of framing this debate, informed chiefly by the field of Christology (the study of Jesus Christ).

What follows then is an adaptation of a sermon I delivered at First Baptist Church of Freeport on Genesis 37 and 45, entitled “No Contradiction”:

In Genesis 37, we see a wishful, bordering-on-arrogant, young Joseph, who dreams that he’ll rule over his brothers. We see a father, Jacob, who favors his younger son. And we see some jealous brothers who go on to betray him. In the end, we see human beings freely acting in accordance with their makeup. We see choice after unfortunate choice, not forced, or out-of-character, but completely explicable via emotions, personalities, fears, etc.

Then, we get Genesis 45, and a lot has happened in between: Joseph has risen in the ranks and is now second in command in Egypt. His brothers travel down from Canaan looking for food and they don’t recognize him. Over the course of the chapter, however, one sees the purposes of God fulfilled.

Despite a myriad of bad choices made by human beings, God’s purpose to lift Joseph up, to preserve the 12 tribes, to multiply the people of Israel, are all fulfilled. Amidst the toxic favoritism of Jacob, amidst the youthful arrogance of Joseph, amidst the greed and jealousy of his brothers, God is still in control.

In these stories, then, we see human agency and divine activity existing together with no contradiction. And I’d like to explain how this can be the case. What I’d like to do first is give you an overview of the debate, in very, very broad strokes. What follows then are two directions or two poles you often see featured in this age-long debate.

The first solution claims that God causes humans to do what they do in order to accomplish his divine purpose. This solution is put forth by many; I won’t name names, denominations, or traditions. The idea, however, is that for God to be truly sovereign, he must directly control all activity in the universe. The primary criticism leveled against this view is that humans are not truly free agents, since God, it seems, tinkers with their will. Solution one.

The second solution, proposed in response to the first one, is that God knows what humans will do and articulates his plan accordingly. God, in other words, allows humans to make free decisions and upon seeing what free choices they will make, designates his plan accordingly. This solution, some form of it at least, is put forth by many; again, I won’t name names, denominations, or traditions. The idea is: for humans to be truly free, their actions must be undertaken with no external influence whatsoever. The main criticism of this view, however, is that God, in the end, is not truly sovereign, since humans in their freedom determine his will. Solution two.

This is a debate that’s being going on for centuries and is one that’s been huge in my own life. I remember debating it in college (yes, that’s what students talk about at Christian college), a little during graduate school, and more in the past three years of ministry in a local church.

However, only upon reading a recent work of Christology (Christ the Heart of Creation by Rowan Williams) did I discover that both positions rely on an unstated (and invalid) assumption.

Both of the above solutions assume that God and human beings exist on the same level of reality; that their actions, their wills, compete for space.

To illustrate this assumption, I want you to picture a chair, an empty chair. You want to sit in it, so you walk toward it, but your friend Tom sits down before you. Tom is sitting in the chair.

For you, a physical human being, to sit down in that chair right now, what has to happen first? How does Tom’s sitting-in-the-chair relate to or inhibit your desire to sit in that chair?

For you to sit in that chair, Tom needs to get up and leave. I think we can agree on that. You can’t both fully sit in that chair at the same time without some contradiction of laws of nature. This is how some tend think about God’s sovereignty and human freedom.

For God to be sovereign, some say, for him to sit in the chair, humans must lose their free will, just a little bit. For humans to be free, some say, for them to sit in the chair, God must lose his sovereignty, just a little bit. This assumes, however, that God and human beings exist on the same level of reality, that their wills, in other words compete for space. But this simply is not true.

Let me give you another illustration. I want you to imagine a dishwasher has been installed. It’s combination of metal, plastic, and rubber. It’s new, paid for, and set up. All it needs is to be plugged in.

When you plug in the dishwasher, how much space does the electricity take up? How much of the dishwasher must you remove to make space for the electricity? The racks? The frame? The silverware-holder? Does all that have to come out? For electricity to fill the dishwasher, how much of the dishwasher needs to leave?

This is an absurd question, I know. Electricity and dishwashers do not compete for space, because they don’t exist in the same way. One is not a physical thing like the other is a physical thing. More of this doesn’t mean less of that.

And here enters Jesus.

In the person of Jesus, Christians profess there to be full humanity, and full divinity, 100% there at the same time. Many throughout history have struggled with this, claiming that Jesus must be less than fully human to be fully God (or vice versa). But anything less than 100% of both would qualify as heresy in the history of the church.

Jesus can be both fully divine and fully human at the same time, just like a dishwasher and electricity can be fully present to each other at the same time. Divinity and humanity, like electricity and matter, do not compete for space.

In Jesus Christ we see that more of God doesn’t mean less of humanity. In Jesus Christ what we see is a genuine human being with a personality, DNA, certain drives and desires, who is completely and fully active at the same time as the eternal Son of God himself.

What this means then is that God can be acting completely while human beings act freely with no contradiction whatsoever. Only because divinity and humanity exist differently, can this be the case.

Jacob can thus freely show favoritism, Joseph can freely flaunt arrogance, the brothers can freely vent jealousy, and God’s purposes are still fulfilled. To pose that God’s will butts against or competes with the will of human beings is to pose that both exist in the same way or on the same plane, but they don’t. If they did, you could never have 100% of one and 100% of the other, as we confess to be present in the person of Jesus Christ.

While you and I, then, can exercise our complete and utter free will, making deliberate choices on the basis of personality, experience, and reason, God can still be said to be completely sovereign throughout; both are true.

I, then, would discourage you from claiming that all of Jacob’s, all of Joseph’s, all the brother’s, all the traders’ actions were directly caused by God and not freely undertaken by those actors. This assumes that the only way for God to be in control is for him to hijack the will of human beings (even a little). This is false.

At the same time, I’d discourage you from claiming that all of Jacob’s, all of Joseph’s, all the brother’s, all the traders’ actions, were so free that they were exempt from God’s guiding hand or un-usable in his plan. This assumes that the only way for humans to be free is for God to look into the future and call what he sees there his plan or his will. This is false.

You have the freedom to make good, thoughtful, Godly choices, you do. God is not forcing your hand. Yet God is sovereign and in-control (somehow), which means that even when we make the worst choices, choices which cause real people to suffer, God’s mission is still fulfilled.

I want you to be encouraged by these truths. As you go about your lives making all kinds of choices, then, know that God and human beings can be fully active, fully present to one another with absolutely no contradiction.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

Baptist and Catholic?

Catholicity is not an option. It is the only reality. For either Baptist churches are expressions of the church catholic, or they are not the church at all (Curtis Freeman).

“We are neither Protestants nor Catholics. We are Baptists.” From their separatist beginnings, Baptists have always teetered on the edge of denominational exclusivism.

From the mid-19th century Landmarkist movement to the Southern Baptist Convention today, many Baptists have conceived of their tradition, either implicitly or explicitly, as the only valid form of Christian orthodoxy. Such exclusivism permeates various strands of modern Christianity but it is especially pronounced, I would say, among Baptists.

As Curtis Freeman and others have noted, however, “The ecumenical movement [by which various denominations engage in dialogue, service, and worship together] is arguably the single most significant development for the church in the twentieth century. Yet remarkably the largest Protestant denomination (SBC) is not a participant.”

While the SBC isn’t representative of all Baptist denominations (i.e., ABC-USA has engaged in ecumenical dialogue since the 1960s), their recent denominational isolationism highlights a prominent trait among Baptists throughout history.

The Protestant Reformation, intended to reform (not replace) the time-tested holy Roman church, led to the rise of various Christian denominations, many of which became established, state-sanctioned institutions. Baptists began their existence then as protesters against the protesters, not in a double-negative-equals-a-positive (pro-Rome) sense, but in a radical, separatist sense.

Over time, Baptists –characterized by believer’s baptism, freedom of the soul, separation of church and state, and local church autonomy– left Holland and the British Isles in search of religious freedom in the New World. And if Roger Williams is any indication, Baptists wasted no time resisting the religious establishment of the early American colonies (i.e., Congregationalism).

At their best Baptists have been champions of religious freedom, unmediated and uncoerced faith, and local, congregational autonomy as opposed to institutional hierarchy. At their worst, however, Baptists have been isolationist and anti-catholic, ‘catholic’ in both the uppercase sense –Roman Catholic– and the lowercase sense –universal, ecumenical, interdenominational.

On this topic, Curtis Freeman has written a riveting book entitled, Contesting Catholicity: Theology for Other Baptists. Freeman, an ordained Baptist minister and Professor of Theology and Baptist Studies at Duke Divinity School, combs painstakingly through Baptist history, showing that isolationism is not characteristic of all Baptists. There have been “other Baptists” throughout each generation of Baptist history, he argues, who have retained their Baptist identity while locating themselves within the church catholic.

Freeman engages in rigorous historical retrieval not out of mere academic curiosity but ecclesiological necessity. He writes: “The categorical rejection of all things catholic,” and I would say: all things ecumenical (or other-than-Baptist), “risks a loss not simply of the catholic [universal, common] substance of the faith but of its Christian substance as well.”

“Either Baptist churches are expressions of the church catholic, or they are not the church at all,” Freeman writes. For some Baptists then, catholicity is not an option to either accept or reject. It is the only authentic reality for followers of Jesus today.

Citing a decree from the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council in 1964, Freeman writes, “the lack of accord among followers of Jesus ‘contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature.’” It’s no wonder then, that immediately following Vatican II, ABC-USA entered into ecumenical dialogue with Roman Catholic officials. And what did they find? Baptists and Catholics have much more in common than they thought.

If Baptists and Roman Catholics have so much in common, how much more Baptists and catholics (other Christian denominations)? What might it look like for Baptists to view themselves not as a sectarian community of authentics but as a “reforming communing of contesting Christians” within the global, catholic church?

Freeman’s book charts a course, and I’d encourage any and all Baptists to follow it. But the answer lies not in reinventing the faith anew but in retrieving the faith of our ancient forebears.

Reading the Apostolic Fathers, studying the history of the global church, engaging in dialogue with other traditions, are all possible ways to adopt this vision. “Other Baptists,” Freeman concludes, “are contesting catholics.” 

Baptists are not the only true believers descended in unbroken lineage from John the Baptist and Jesus Christ. They’re not the only authentic, orthodox Christians, no. Baptists are peculiar Protestants located within the global, universal church, who cannot afford (especially now) to forget their catholicity.

The world today, in sum, sees a church that is fragmented, disconnected, and divided. What better witness to the unifying heart of Jesus than if Baptists became a little more catholic.

Jonah Bissell

Pastor

What is Our Isaac?

God is always moving, whether we notice it or not. And God calls us to join him: Will you?

This past Sunday we had the privilege of revisiting one of the most iconic episodes in Jewish and Christian literature: the binding of Isaac, also known as, the Akedah (Genesis 22:1-14).

This story, in which Abraham is commanded to sacrifice his long-awaited son Isaac would become in Judaism a dominant tale and in Christianity it would become a type for the death of Jesus Christ. It also happens to be one of the most brilliant examples of literary art in human history. One literary critic, Eric Auerbach, compares this story with the epic poems of Homer (i.e., Iliad, Odyssey), expounding upon its suggestive power and literary subtlety.

During the sermon we walked through the text verse-by-verse paying careful attention to what the narrator tells us (as opposed to “filling in the gaps” with psychological or narrative conjecture). Upon studying the text as written and handed down, we concluded that the question posed by the text is as follows: Does Abraham’s love of Isaac threaten or weaken his commitment to YHWH?

The passage, in other words, is not about a jealous, codependent God who needs to see that Abraham loves him more than anything else to feel secure in his identity. Neither is it about a capricious, bloodthirsty deity who delights in child sacrifice. Nor, I would say, is it about God not knowing something at the beginning (whether or not Abraham is faithful) and learning something new by the end (that Abraham is indeed faithful).

The “test” which Abraham undergoes is less like the SAT and more like Basic Training. By commanding Abraham to hand over his long-awaited, beloved son Isaac, God intends to strengthen Abraham’s trust, a trust that is the only real condition for God’s covenant with Abraham to stand.

Before, in Genesis 12, 15, and 17, God had promised to make Abraham into a great nation, to give him and his descendants the land of Israel, to bless him and make his name great. Elsewhere, he promises to bless the entire world through the descendants which would come from Abraham.

All Abraham must do is remain faithful to God by obeying his command of circumcision and continuing to follow God’s lead. If Abraham keeps covenant, in short, God will bless the world through him. The world’s blessedness depends, in a way, on Abraham’s faithfulness.

Abraham’s trial in Genesis 22:1-14, then, is for the sake of the entire world. If Abraham refuses to obey YHWH, balking at the notion of child sacrifice, or clinging to his most treasured possession (in his mind: his sure guarantee of eternal happiness), the world will not be blessed through him. The covenant will dissolve.

Those who know the story, of course know that Abraham did obey, at least he intended to. He arose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, went to the place of which God had spoken, and lifted his hand to slay his son. At the very last moment, God “provides” (a verb which can be translated “select, determine, designate”) a ram to be offered instead of Isaac. At the end of the day, it’s still God who determines what he must give up.

We learn from this story that Abraham’s love of Isaac, his commitment to his long-awaited son and heir, did not weaken his commitment to YHWH. God’s promise to bless the world through Abraham (the covenant) was not jeopardized by Abraham’s most treasured possession.

In the sermon I asked: What exists in your life which threatens or weakens your commitment to Jesus? What, in other words, is your Isaac?

In our modern Western context, we are likely to read this individually, taking the yous and yours as singular: What exists in my life which threatens or weakens my commitment to Jesus? What is my Isaac?

Now, this isn’t all bad. If you feel led to engage this question for yourself, by all means do so! What I am most interested in at this moment, however, is: What is our (the Church’s) Isaac?

Toward the end of the sermon, I listed a number of Christians (some individuals, some communities) who were urged to give something up to enhance their usefulness in God’s mission.

Saul of Tarsus, for one, had to give up thinking that this radical new sect called “the Way” (later called Christianity) was heretical and wrong.

The apostle Peter, later, had to give up dearly held beliefs (sourced from the OT) about cleanliness to include Gentiles in the early Church.

James and the Church at Jerusalem had to give up thinking that Jewishness (marked by circumcision, Sabbath/festival observance, etc.) was the only way to be saved.

And countless early Christians gave up health and life during the plagues and the Great Persecution(s).

“Christians today,” I went on, “give up many things to be faithful to God’s mission: giving up upper-middle class comforts to minister in impoverished neighborhoods; prejudice against certain races, classes, orientations to bring the gospel to where it’s needed most; some dearly held positions or beliefs (sourced from Scripture, even) which hinder rather than mobilize the Gospel.”

After all this, I asked: “What do you need to give up? What is your Isaac?” This, of course, encouraged personal, individual reflection in the pews. I even continued with: “Only you know the answer to this question; not me, not your spouse, not your neighbor. Only you after honest prayer and reflection can identify what you might need to give up.”

Moving away from the “I” and the “me,” however, what about the “us”? What about the “us”?

After the sermon, we typically gather for an organic “Sermon Review” discussion time. There is no agenda besides opening up the floor for questions and comments about the sermon and the passage that was preached.

Toward the end of this particular session, we discussed the example of the apostle Peter in greater depth. We compared Peter with Abraham, both characters having “checkered pasts,” but whom God showed mercy and grace in giving them second chance after second chance.

The Abraham who lied about his wife, handing her over (sexually) to Egyptian nobles, is entrusted with the spiritual fate of the entire world. The Peter who denies Jesus three times is declared to be the foundation of the Church itself.

Abraham is given an opportunity to obey and to strengthen his trust. So, we discussed, was Peter. After insulting Jesus on numerous occasions, denying him openly before others, God gives him a vision in Acts 10.

Peter, a faithful, Torah-observant Jew, had grown up thinking that certain foods were unclean (off-limits) for Israelites. The Scriptural basis for this conviction is ironclad. You find such prescriptions all over the Pentateuch (esp. Exodus-Deuteronomy).  Such “food laws,” writes Darrell Bock, “underscore Israel’s separation from the nations.” When Peter sees in the vision a menagerie of unclean animals and hears the command, “Kill and eat,” everything in him says: “Say no (to this test).” And he does. The voice comes again a second time, and again, Peter says, “No” (unstated but implied). Finally, it comes a third time, and then the vision dissolves.

Peter has lived his entire life clinging fast to such purity laws. He has read them in Torah, practiced them in his daily life, safeguarded them at all costs. Now, God seems to say: “Take your beloved convictions and offer them up as a burnt-offering at the place I will show you.” In other words, these practices you have safeguarded, these laws you have obeyed, these beliefs you have held; I need you to give them up.

Peter’s “symbolic world of Torah and his identity as a member of God’s people is stretched to an unimaginable extent” in this episode (Luke T. Johnson). “In a sense this is the book’s turning point, since from here the gospel will fan out in all directions across a vast array of geographical regions” (Darrell Bock). “The LORD here forces Peter to acknowledge that God’s granting of salvation takes place apart from Torah, and that the people of Israel no longer need to separate clean and unclean foods, clean and unclean people” (Eckhard Schnabel). 

Peter, like Abraham, is being called forward into the unknown future written by God. If he had clung to his dearly held beliefs, to Scripturally supported (!) laws about cleanliness and impurity: the Gospel may not have spread to the Gentiles (or, it would’ve, but only by the preaching of Paul).

God is always moving, whether we notice it or not. And God calls us to join him: Will you?

“Understanding and following God’s call requires courage,” writes Schnabel. It requires courage to be the first one to challenge deeply held communal convictions (purity laws). It requires courage to be the one to step up and say, “I think we need to give this up.” All throughout the Christian story, we see examples of this.

At the end of our post-sermon discussion, one participant asked: “Might we be living in such a moment today?” He said, “This is a pattern in Scripture, yes, but might it extend to our present?”

The Church, like Abraham, is being called (always) to “give something up” for the sake of God’s mission. What do we need to give up? What is our Isaac?

Jonah Bissell

Pastor