'Dissent': What does that mean in a 'post-Christendom' context?
Gamma Gamaliel
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in Purgatory
@Barnabas62 has posted on the value of the 'dissenting' Christian tradition with its emphasis on personal conscience and, in its 'baptistic' and 'Congregational' forms, the autonomy of the local 'gathered' church.
My question is, how does 'dissent' manifest itself now that:
- 'State' and 'established' churches no longer hold as much sway as they did when the original 'seperatists' emerged in the early 1600s - and had become 'denominations' in the modern sense by the 19th century?
- Churches of whatever stripe are essentially 'voluntarist' in the West.
- Many of the things they were 'dissenting' from have receded into the background.
- Things that were once considered radical are now fairly standard and mainstream.
What does it mean to be a 'dissenter' within contemporary 'Western' Christianity?
What are churches that emerged from the radical Reformation or the 'dissenting' tradition offering these days that differs from what might be found in the older 'historic' Churches other than particular 'styles' or customs that they have developed over the years?
Yes, there will be female clergy of course, whereas those are missing in some historic Churches.
But what else?
What does 'dissent' look like when most mainstream churches tend to share the values of the surrounding society?
What do we need to do to demonstrate our 'dissenting' credentials if we feel we should do so?
My question is, how does 'dissent' manifest itself now that:
- 'State' and 'established' churches no longer hold as much sway as they did when the original 'seperatists' emerged in the early 1600s - and had become 'denominations' in the modern sense by the 19th century?
- Churches of whatever stripe are essentially 'voluntarist' in the West.
- Many of the things they were 'dissenting' from have receded into the background.
- Things that were once considered radical are now fairly standard and mainstream.
What does it mean to be a 'dissenter' within contemporary 'Western' Christianity?
What are churches that emerged from the radical Reformation or the 'dissenting' tradition offering these days that differs from what might be found in the older 'historic' Churches other than particular 'styles' or customs that they have developed over the years?
Yes, there will be female clergy of course, whereas those are missing in some historic Churches.
But what else?
What does 'dissent' look like when most mainstream churches tend to share the values of the surrounding society?
What do we need to do to demonstrate our 'dissenting' credentials if we feel we should do so?
Comments
“Dissent,” as being used in this thread and the thread that gave rise to it, isn’t a term I hear much at all in an American context, except in historical usage when it refers to British dissent and colonization.
That’s not to say similar dynamics may not happen here, but “dissent” isn’t, in my experience at least, the framework for thinking about them or the label applied to them.
I was reminded of the cost in a work context many years ago by a good boss.
“If you tell a senior man he’s wrong and you’re wrong, he may if you’re lucky give you credit for your imagination. But if you tell him he’s wrong and he is wrong, he’ll never forgive you!”
Another guideline I got was worded this way. “First class bosses are not afraid to appoint first class subordinates. Second class bosses appoint third class subordinates”.
In any context, unless the organisation positively encourages free expression of ideas, dissenters are likely to get into trouble. And I think that’s a challenge to all leaders. “Is it possible that our established way of looking at things needs to be looked at critically. Particularly in this fast changing world? Or do we need to defend the status quo which has served us very well so far?”
Or more simply, “is this upstart a threat to my authority”.
I suppose there is an irregular verb in place.
“I’m trying to point out something important
You are resisting established authority
They are a danger to order”
I think this is the context of dissent. Both in churches and elsewhere.
How does it apply in a church context when 'The State' isn't calling the shots other than in setting legal boundaries?
Or in church settings that were once considered radical but which are now mainstream?
Is it simply about being a 'bit bolshie'? Non-compliant?
In any church or organisational context there are going to be good bosses and bad bosses, good leaders and poor leaders etc etc.
I'm not convinced that @Barnabas62 has yet highlighted anything distinctive or specific as to what 'dissent' involves in practice other than very broad generalisations that could apply anywhere.
For example the word 'protestant' would seem to say the the most important thing about the group is that they are protesting about another group which was there earlier on and which had been considered to be correct.
In German for example the word 'Protestant' is rarely used and instead the word 'evangelisch' is used which seems to be to be more positive and less focussed on 'dissent'.
But in a church context, the status quo is more heavily defended by tradition or Tradition. And the authority of leaders is strengthened by a belief that the authority of God is passed on in some way to the leader. By for example the laying on of hands. And by apostolic succession. The calling is divinely confirmed.
In congregational, rather than episcopal, churches, the position is somewhat different. The leader is called by a congregational decision or ratification and their authority is local. But folks will believe, or tend to believe, that God has been in the calling by a work of the Holy Spirit.
My point being that the tradition or Tradition, and the means of confirming the calling of leaders, both work more in favour of the status quo. So dissenters may have a peculiar difficulty in being heard. Churches in general are therefore “conservative”. Though of course some are more “conservative” than others.
And my second point is that more space should be given for dissenting views. God can speak through an ass, or a little child, or a dissident prophet. And Jesus was The Dissident Prophet, as we are reminded in the gospels and the letters. He spoke truth to established power and it was one of the major human factors that got him crucified. As is clear from the gospel accounts.
So I believe that tradition and Tradition do well to re-examine the value of the dissenting voice. And leaders do well to examine themselves in this context.
Now I think it is true that in many mainstream churches today there is a greater tolerance of diverse understandings. And there have been beneficial changes (at least to my mind)That’s a good thing. But there’s a difference between being tolerated and being listened to.
I hope this is not read as a generalisation! I remember finally an amusing observation by the late, Orthodox, Leetle Masha.
“We’ve sung the same songs since 503” ( We were seeking to write another verse to the tune of Immortal Invisible which characterised the churches where we worshipped.)
Maybe it’s time for a change?
In the Orthodox Church the ideal
situation is that the parish presents someone to the Bishop for ordination. They tend not to be helicoptered in from outside unless circumstances dictate.
We've got a Deacon who is being trained up for the priesthood that way and with universal consent within the parish - although we didn't put it to the vote in Baptist 'church-meeting' style.
I've heard that when the Copts choose a new Pope a child picks the name out of a vessel in which the names of the nominees are written. I like that idea.
As for 'time for change', well as the old saying goes, 'If it ain't bust ...' 😉
'Change? Change? What is this change?'
Is outrage ...
On the issue of updating songs or 'modernising' worship then surely that's a matter for individual Churches and denominations?
It wouldn't be for an Orthodox Patriarch or Methodist Superintendent to determine what should or shouldn't be sung in an independent evangelical setting or in the URC or ...
To most intents and purposes I'd suggest that more 'individualistic' churches - and I don't necessarily mean that in a pejorative way - have largely 'won' as they match the prevailing zeitgeist to a large extent.
In which case, does it become a 'dissenting' position to be reactionary?
I've spoken to a number of young converts and enquirers in Orthodox settings who have eschewed the kind of popular worship songs and choruses found elsewhere.
I've heard RC bishops make similar observations about experiences in their own settings.
So what happens when a 'dissenting' style or way of doing things becomes normative?
Do we 'dissent' from that?
Are we more counter-cultural if we eschew guitars and drums and sing accapella?
Are any of us as 'dissenting', distinctive and counter-cultural as we like to think?
@Forthview I once read - or heard - someone say that Protestants needed to recover the pro part of the name - emphasising what they are 'for' rather than 'against'.
'For' the Gospel, 'for' human dignity and potential, 'for' social justice and equity ...
I think we could all do with the 'pro' in that sense.
When churches don't tolerate diverse understandings, some people leave, sometimes to form their own churches. To my mind the dissenting tradition historically doesn't seem any better than the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches at tolerating different ideas; if anything it might be worse, as every little difference spawned a new church. Old Order Mennonites, Conservative Mennonite and mainline Mennonites have to have their own groups because of lifestyle differences. The Amish schism from the Mennonites has led to, at a guess, at least five different kinds of Amish groups. Then there are the Baptists, who in Britain in the early 17th century held that the Anabaptists were heretics. The British Baptists seem pretty unified today, though -- maybe there just aren't that many? In the US there are millions of Baptists who can't get along with each other. We have the Southern Baptist Convention, the American Baptist Churches USA (originally the Northern Baptists -- these two split over slavery in the 19th century), three different but similarly named National Baptist Conventions (all historically Black), the National Missionary Baptists and Progressive National Baptists (also historically Black), and these are just the big groups. Wikipedia lists 61 different Baptist groups in the US, plus there are unaligned Baptist congregations.
I grew up in an American Baptist Church that didn't tolerate diverse views. It was "read the Bible for yourself, and if you don't interpret it the way we do, you're reading it wrong." The regional conference it belonged to, American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest, broke with the American Baptist Churches USA about 10 years ago, saying that ABCUSA was too lax in enforcing the exclusion of gays and lesbians. In other words, ABCUSA left it to individual congregations to decide whether to ordain and marry homosexual people, and a whole regional conference left because they didn't want to tolerate the toleration of diversity. Since then, the church I grew up in has left that regional group and become a non-denominational congregation. I don't know what they couldn't tolerate; by that point my mother had moved away.
There were fairly loose 'connectional' relationships between Baptist churches for a good while, but they were relatively numerous with around 40 congregations around the London area by the 1640s. Some of these congregations would have been tiny though.
I'm not sure how many Baptists there are in the UK now. 250,000? 300,000? Less?
There are smaller Baptist groups not affiliated to the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland such as the Reformed Baptists, the Grace Baptists and the delightfully named Strict and Particular Baptists but they are pretty small.
Most independent charismatic and 'non-denominational' churches tend to be 'baptistic' in tone even if not governed in a 'congregational' way.
I'm aware of the mid-19th century 'restorationist' movements in the US and there were some smaller echoes of that over here. There was also a later unrelated 'restorationist' movement here in the 1980s and '90s which had parallels with some US 'non-denominational' groups but which was largely home-groqn, although there was some US input and influences.
As you can imagine, I'm not out to say whether Big C historic Churches or small c churches and denominations are 'better' or 'worse' than one another. What I am saying does overlap with some of @Ruth's observations to some extent.
I was part of a 'restorationist' group that was trying to reinvent the wheel every five minutes in an attempt to get ourselves back to the chimera of achieving the 'purity and power' we believed was found in the Book of Acts.
It all feels very misguided and misdirected now.
But then there are mythical 'golden ages' in all Christian traditions/Traditions - be it the middle-ages for some RCs, the pre-Schism era for many Orthodox or the 18th and 19th century 'Awakenings' for many evangelical or 'revivalist' Protestants.
The older historic Churches are often accused of becoming 'fossilised' whilst newer and more 'emerging' churches seem prone to spirals of fissaporousness.
As I used to quip when there was talk of 'emerging church' a good while back, 'What's it going to look like once it has emerged?'
Sure, some people will cite 'semper reformanda' of course but on whose terms and who decides?
Semper emerge-aranda?
Semper fissapo-rander?
What's the way 'forward' in all of this?
Sorry, that wasn’t clear and it was entirely my fault. “Song” was a metaphor. Which was the way Leetle Masha meant it as we discussed at the time. Just meant doing the same thing and expecting others to understand what it meant. A communication issue.
So I wasn’t thinking specifically about worship, though that’s included. I was thinking more about intelligible communication. And have just demonstrated that I can be bad at it too!
I’ll return to the discussion tomorrow. One of my health issues is giving me a lot of pain right now and I’m off to bed with a pain killer.
On the intelligibility thing, I've said elsewhere on these boards how my own Church has to do a lot better in that respect. There's the 'consubstantial conumdrum' thread on Ecclesiantics about all this.
That's not necessarily a 'dissenting' thing of course.
It could be a more 'dissenting' thing to insist on Latin or Elizabethan English.
Whatever the case, most people have 'dissented' and voted with their feet and not darkening the door of any kind of church from one year to the next.
I do not believe it is possible to be a "dissenter" in a social environment where your views are tolerated.
If you are in England and are a "dissenting" Christian, there's nothing there to be dissenting about.
Thanks for that post. It will come as no surprise to you, having read my posts for over twenty years, that I am no defender of the kind of dissent that leads to what I see as the intolerance to be found in the Southern Baptists.
And that gives me the opportunity to to explain something very important.
Here, from the Wikipedia article entitled the Nonconformist Conscience, is a crucial extract. It also explains the connection between the UK term nonconformism and dissent. It’s a long quote but a necessary one.
(Bold is mine).
It will be clear that I belong to the Old Dissenters! I don’t discount the purpose and intentions of the New Dissenters but there is a risk associated with that outlook that I want to illustrate from a quote I heard from a sermon, years ago, that I have never forgotten.
It will come as no surprise to you either that I am an outspoken critic of that “kind of church”. Or indeed any church which has something approaching that kind of outlook. It seems to me to stand in sharp contrast to the values associated with the Old Dissenters.
Their values were born out of the religious persecution they had experienced or seen in the approach of the powerful in charge of the religious majority.
I’m not going back to any romantic view of the past. But I am saying that it might do a lot of good if churches examined their consciences in the light of the values of the Old Dissenters. Nor am I asserting they are confined to the Old Dissenters. There have been many over the last two millennia who have embraced and demonstrated those values.
I should have said “Southern Baptists and others”. Bad omission on my part.
Heck, my great grandfather was a Baptist minister in South Wales and would have embraced the aprt of values you highlight.
What I'm trying to ask is how do those values manifest themselves now, in a post-Christendom, largely 'post-Christian' and secularised context or where, as @Basketactortale reminds us there is little to 'dissent' about - in religious terms at least.
The 'Non-conformist Conscience' was a thing back around the high water mark of the Liberal Party, reaching its highest extent during Edwardian times.
WW1, the rise of the Labour Party, increasing secularisation from the 1920s onwards effectively caused that tide to recede, or else replaced or 'fulfilled' it in some way.
I'm not sure that 'Old Dissent' has recovered from that nor found a new place to stand. It had the rug pulled from underneath it and in some ways was the victim of its own success.
If I look back at my late wife's family history and my own, I see parallel things. Non-conformist mill and tinplate workers morphing into small shop-owners, timber yard managers and school teachers and becoming secular 'free-thinkers' in the process.
I'm not knocking what 'Old Dissent' achieved nor the social changes it helped bring about - education, health-care, universal suffrage etc.
But it's been left high and dry as the waters of late 19th century religion have receded.
So what does it do now? How does it express itself next?
It's not going to join the kind of reactionary quasi-religious backlash we see in MAGA-style US evangelicalism or ultra-traditional Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
So what is it going to do and how can it distinguish itself from other liberal movements or tendencies or 'from the world' as it were?
I don't see many Christians of any stripe eschewing consumerism and materialism. The only forms of 'dissent' that I tend to see is an insistence on traditional forms of sexual morality or wanting to turn the clock back to an imagined idyll that never existed in the first place.
I'm asking the same question of myself as I'm asking @Barnabas62. If we see ourselves as 'dissenters' or Amos-es or those called to show a 'more excellent way', how do we do that?
Ranting and raving about Epiphanies issues isn't going to get us very far - should any of us wish to go down that route.
A kind of beige, bland 'we're all nice and cuddly really' approach isn't going to gain much traction either.
Of course, we should both work with and 'accompany' all those who are working to make the world a better place - none of us have a monopoly on that.
That might take us in different or even opposing directions at times.
But I'm wondering what 'dissent' actually looks like now we don't have Welsh noncomformists forced to pay tithes to the Anglican establishment even though they didn't attend Anglican churches, or where nobody is barred from higher education on the grounds of their faith.
The battles the 'Old Dissenters' fought have largely been won. What do they do now?
In their fascinating recent book “Forming Community of Hope in the Great Unravelling” Alan Roxburgh and Roy Searle suggest some steps for church leaders. Here from a review of the book is a summary of these steps.
(Review from the Baptists Together website).
That’s a long term strategy but the current ills have hardly developed overnight.
I don’t know Alan Roxburgh but I do know Roy Searle very well. He’s a Baptist minister, one of the founders of the neo- monastic Northumbria Community, and (to his own surprise and others) a former President of the UK Baptist Union (2005-6). An old school dissenter.
It’s more than a call to repentance but it certainly contains that.
If I knew the answer I wouldn't be asking the question.
I've heard Roy Searle speak once and he came across as a decent bloke. But I was left with all sorts of unanswered questions, same as I am when I read the blurb you've quoted.
It sounds all good and right and pious but what does it mean in practice?
I keep hearing Anglican clergy complain of 'managerialism' and corporate gobbledegook and I sympathise.
Then I look at how disorganised things are in my own circles and think how we could do with a smidgeon of managerialism to bring us into line.
Monks aren't necessarily good managers.
This is what I'm getting at. How? What does it involve?
It's one thing to say, 'I come from.a dissenting tradition,' but how does that work out in practice?
It's one thing to say, 'We need to ask what the Spirit is saying to God's people at the moment,'but how so we discern that? How do we know we are hearing 'right'?
All sorts of people go round saying that God's told them to do this, that or the other.
Back in my 'restorationist' days God seemed to change his mind every five minutes. One minute it was 'this', next it was something else again and 'this' was conveniently forgotten about.
Then there was always a 'new thing.'
God always seemed to have a 'New Thing' up his sleeve and nobody ever really defined what that might involve nor how we'd recognise it if it happened.
There was always a sense that everything was bust and that God was calling us to fix it but with no real blue-print as to what things might look like once they were fixed.
'I'm from the dissenting tradition.'
Yes, but dissenting about what, exactly?
And what are we going to do about it?
To my mind to be a dissenting Christian is not about brands of church it is about expressing their beliefs through the kinds of political groups that work against the prevailing political and economic ethos.
That made me smile!
The Congregational approach certainly allows for “different strokes for different congregations”, so Alan and Roy are not arguing for some kind of unified “fix”. In fact they are arguing that looking for fixes is a part of the problem.
Indeed, their argument would allow for the possibility that God wants there to be a smigeon more management where you are! That would be totally consistent with Congregationalism!
Taking it wider, it’s perfectly possible to believe Protestant functionalism needs more ontology and Orthodoxical ontology needs more functionality!
Actually I think all of us need rather more than a bit more love and understanding. Not least of our differences.
But you can never be certain what happens when we acknowledge our human and corporate frailties, stop, be still, and listen.
Which, depending on perspective, could apply equally to left-wing or right-wing political groups.
Right-wing populist Christians could regard themselves as 'dissenters' for taking a stand against what they see as detrimental policies from the liberal left.
Does 'dissent', like beauty, lie in the eye of the beholder?
@Barnabas62, ha ha - yes, and please don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting that Searle and Co aren't onto something.
I like your thing about Protestant 'functionalism' and Orthodox 'ontology' needing one another.
Thinking about it, and cards on the table, I've long believed that 'Eastern' and 'Western' Christianity need one another. They aren't necessarily in opposition.
How this works out in practice though is hard to envisage given current levels of polarisation and 'noise'.
We need the 'still, small voice.'
I'm encouraged by the growth of neo-monastic movements and Protestants rediscovering pilgrimage and such - although it's easy for such things to become commodified and 'marketised'.
Not so that they can become 'like us' - I wouldn't wish some of our tendencies on anyone - but because it represents a nod at least to the past and a concern for continuity rather than the Pol Pot-ish Year Zero 'slash and burn' approach advocated by some groups estranged from the 'Great Tradition'.
That may sound very 'conservative' of me, of course.
But yes, I'd see Searle and others like him as a 'fellow traveller' to a great extent.
Which I suppose is inevitable, but I can't tell you how much I resent it.
Yes, they are becoming more expensive than they were
I'd wondered about mentioning religious communities earlier in this thread but was thinking about them for a possible new thread on the subject but as @ThunderBunk has mentioned them very appositely here, I think it's worth discussing their 'dissenting' qualities - or otherwise.
At the risk of over-simplification I think it's interesting that the move towards monasticism occurred when Christianity became a more established or dominant force.
'Red martyrdom' replaced by 'white martyrdom' and so on.
Monastic communities eventually became victims of their own success. Medieval English monasteries famously became wealthy on the wool trade.
At their 'best' I think monastic and neo-monastic communities or 'base-communities' can embody ways of challenging materialism and consumerism and so on, but equal can become part of the 'machine.'
Fascinating point. I think contemplative Catholic communities (monasteries, nunneries) are very mainstream within Catholicism, since contemplation has always been highly valued. As have lives of poverty, chastity and obedience. There is no doubt however that their continuing existence does represent a lifestyle challenge to the wider world and in that sense it does seem like a form of dissent. I think of them more as embracing a distinctive calling, than dissenting.
Protestant communities are another matter, probably worth a separate post.
@ThunderBunk did you have any particular communities in mind?
I know that the contemplative dimension is something the RCs are good at, and there's much more to them than that, of course.
The Protestant emphasis on the scriptures and on personal faith is also a strong point, but it can veer into individualism and illuminism too, though - just as the older sacramental Traditions can veer into authoritarianism and 'group think.'
I think some monastic movements were a form of 'dissent'. The Cistercians for instance. The Franciscans too in different kind of way.
The Orthodox don't have religious orders as such but I can think of monastic who could certainly have been described as 'dissenters' to some extent - Mother Maria Skobtsova for instance.
How about the Desert Fathers? Weren’t they the predecessors of the various monastic movements? And certainly way before the Catholic/Orthodox schism.
And Hesychasm (if I’ve spelled that right!)?
I should perhaps have mentioned the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) in that context. Thing is, as someone who was 'paleo-orthodox' before becoming Orthodox, I tend to take anything from the pre-Schism 'Undivided Church' as a 'given'.
Which doesn't mean I take all the hagiographies literally.
They were implicitly and tacitly included in my comments.
St Anthony Thr Great is generally regarded as the first of the Desert Fathers but the impetus towards withdrawal from urban society and the adoption of an ascetic lifestyle had been growing before that.
Essentially, Christian monasticism developed from Jewish roots. John the Baptist withdrew to the desert and lived on locusts and wild honey. He certainly 'spoke truth to power.'
The Essenes were an ascetic and apocalyptic Jewish communal movement where people withdrew into the desert to await the end of the world.
As far as can he ascertained it seems that some early Christians chose to live on the edges of towns, the least salubrious parts in those days, and adopt a simple lifestyle making handcrafts or perhaps living on hand-outs.
Gradually they moved further and further out until eventually they lived in caves and 'waste places'.
The impetus for this partly came from the tolerance and eventual dominance of Christianity. No more Diocletian persecution. No more 'red martyrdom.'
So ascetics aimed for 'white martyrdom' instead. Gradually, communities formed and 'cenobotic' groups developed from the initial solitary and eremitic practices.
In the West St Benedict developed his famous 'rule' for the organisation and conduct of monastic communities. He frowned upon the more medication and nomadic forms of eremitic monasticism as he believed this encouraged indigence and hermits to wander about skanking food and money off everyone else.
Instead, monasteries were to be self-suppprting with monastics using their skills and labour for the benefit of the community and to assist any who came for succour or support.
The rest is history.
I remember reading something by a Protestant commentator - I forget their name - who observed that for all Protestant squeamishness about monasticism, it had to be accepted that anything significant theologically between around 500 and 1500 occurred or developed in a monastic context.
Luther was an Augustinian monk of course.
Monasteries probably don't represent 'dissent' in the way @Barnabas62 is using the term. In essence they sought to conserve and pass on received tradition rather than innovate, reform or change anything.
That doesn't mean there weren't reforming movements within monasticism from time to time.
And monastics did challenge the established order from time to time. I'm reminded of the Russian monk who confronted Ivan The Terrible by greeting him with a bloody piece of meat cupped in his hands.
In principle the existence of groups of people who adopt a different lifestyle and set of values to the surrounding society is meant to present some kind of 'prophetic' challenge.
Post-Reformation this could be seen in radical reformation groups like the Hutterites and Amish or communitarian movements like The Diggers after the English Civil Wars.
I've begun a new thread on 'neo-monastic' movements and the extent to which these things are counter-cultural or otherwise.
I'd see it as complementary to the Western contemplative tradition rather than antithetical to it ... but I'm no expert.
It’s very different.
I wouldn't go as far as making that accusation myself but I don’t see much by way of societal 'challenge' from churches and individuals in the 'dissenting' tradition now that the issues they were dissenting from in the 17th to 19th centuries have largely disappeared or become attenuated.
I did know, and admire, an eco-warrior type in the Baptist church I attended. I know a few Orthodox people who live in a similar kind of way but by and large most of us of whatever Christian tradition live lives that are indistinguishable from anyone else's other than going to church on a Sunday.
I'm still waiting to hear how 'dissent' expresses itself these days. So far all I'm picking up are platitudes about how we need to rearrange things and 'listen to the Spirit' without any practical indications of how this might be achieved other than to adopt congregational governance systems.
Isn't this very much down to your own expectations here? Isn't this a demand that dissent fit the narrow parameters of your own religious individualism...
If dissent was good at the latter, then why is Protestantism so split-worthy? That doesn’t mean dissent is a bad thing. However, a good diagnosis doesn’t guarantee a good prescription.
What I do think we all share in common now, though, is a 'voluntarist' vibe as it were and in many ways I'd suggest that those churches with a congregationalist polity are 'ahead of the game' in some respects as they've had several hundred years of operating in a 'gathered' way.
At the same time there's the old adage about those who are wedded to the spirit of the age being widowed to it in the next.
We aren't in Victorian or Edwardian Britain, nor are we in 19th century Russia.
If I sound as if I've narrowed the scope to my own concerns that hasn't been my intention.
What I'm trying to explore is how the 'dissenting' tradition in particular and the rest of is more generally can adjust or adapt to the position we all find ourselves in.
We all 'sing the Lord's song in a strange land.'
Perhaps 'in exile' we have to work for the peace and wellbeing of 'Babylon' rather than railing against it.
Sure. I can relate to that as I've been involved in local/regional politics.
Within my own religious circles I warm towards those who see 'Orthodoxy' as a destination rather than as somewhere we've 'arrived' in order to pride ourselves in having done so and look down on everyone else.
I don’t know if I'm making myself clear on this thread.
I'm struggling to articulate things.
I’m bothered by those who think they’ve arrived.
I'm not sure how much that relates to being an "unorthodox" sort of Christian. And it has been a while since I lived in such a space. Though curiously, around the place I live now, being an open social conservative could also lead to a certain degree of social censure in many places.
The degree to which social shunning is effective in modern society is an interesting question as it relates to being a social dissenter. Where does it matter and how? Do we really care if we don't have friends in a certain sense?
Or is from a different source? Either way, it resonates with me too. In the circles in which I move, I often hear a slightly different version: “Be who you were created to be.”
Incidentally, I've heard it said, from an Orthodox source, that the term 'Catholic' or 'Catholicity' carries within it the sense of working towards universally- not that it is an attained position but work in progress.
I know plenty of Orthodox who'd baulk at the idea that Big O Orthodoxy is work in progress, although we always say that we are open to the possibility of a future Ecumenical Council 'unpacking' things a bit more.
Perhaps because we know that's not likely to happen for hundreds of years ...
There's a recent Orthodox book on ecumenism which I'd like to read as it takes a 'working towards' approach and acknowledges that we have to listen to our RC and Protestant sisters and brothers rather than expecting everything to be a one way street.
'It's alright. Give them a few hundred years and they'll come round to our way of thinking ...' 😉
Whether we'll ever back down on that one remains to be seen. I can understand a desire to be Big O and to defend 'the faith once revealed to the saints', but that doesn't mean we have to be paranoid about it.
On the scriptural basis for the Augustine quote, I'm reminded of 1 John 3: 1-3 which has both God's action - the love of God which makes us his children - and our human response, the purification of ourselves as we have this hope.
It's an eschatological hope of course, but it begins now.
Now and not yet.
We'll cut the Reformed some slack.
Provided they agree with us in the end ... 😉
🤣
You remind me of an old joke some of the more relaxed Open Brethren tell against themselves. Obviously not the premillenialists.
A new arrival in heaven is being shown around .by St Peter to the many rooms in heaven. As they get to one which has no windows and from which the sound of mournful singing can be heard, St Peter tiptoes past and encourages the new arrival to do the same.
The new arrival whispers “What’s going on in that room?” St Peter whispers his reply. “Don’t worry. It’s the Brethren. They think no one else is here.”
I have also heard this line. And a lot of American Christians are crypto-baptists.