The convictions of the First Friends were what ordered their theo-political imagination (as Cavanugh calls it). This ‘imagination’ guided their practice, their missionary-inspired anti-Constantinian message that Christ had retunred and is the head of the church. The head of the church is not the state, it’s not learned clergy, but Christ alone. The Quaker narrative is not complete without this realization. Their convictions drew on something else, looked back to something other which sought to reinstate the reality of God’s Kingdom here and now. When we seek to simply reinstate, or draw on the origins of Quakerism, or our other traditions, we forego, even silence, the actual well-spring, the experience that these First generation Friends drew on. If we miss this, we run the risk of silencing an essential feature of their message; early Quakerism saw itself as restoring early Christianity. As a result, if this is ignored we’ll continue to struggle to find a Quakerism with the force and motivation of early Friends; we’ll flounder as we try to have a Quakerism worth believing in.
For those of you on the fence about Obama, this should help clear things up. Tim LaHaye has argued that Obama isn’t the Anti-Christ; leaving such positions as the “seven-headed beast” and the “Babylon the mother of harlots” as potential career options.
Did you know you could die from a nosebleed? Edward Bloom is one of the .oo1% of the population who has.
In discussing how particular, newly planted and non-Western, churches could potentially develop “in loco an ecclesiology at once biblically and theologically responsive,” mission historian and theologian, Wilbert Shenk argues that ecclesiology has in the past often been ignored or fallen secondary to the primacy of evangelism and conversion of individuals. This is largely due to the overwhelming influence of revivalist theology stemming from the “Great Century.” However, this need not be the case. Instead, soteriology ought not to be developed apart from ecclesiology and thus what is needed is a full-fledged understanding of the local church as well as the church universal. His key point is well worth meditating on:
The church is more than a collection of saved individuals. The body of Christ is a corporate expression of the living Christ. It comes to concretion in particular cultures and among particular peoples. It is a worshiping, serving fellowship which witnesses to the world of God’s righteousness now become manifest in its midst. But no local fellowship, no association of churches, no national church is complete in itself. The church universal embraces each local fellowship, bringing it to the completeness of which it is incapable so long as it remains alone. The church universal is both empirical reality and eschatological hope. It ever stands in a tension with the sociopolitical order. One strand of the missionary dynamic is that the body of Christ is not yet complete. Christ as head of the church impels his body to continue working to complete the body. This clearly calls for the witness to be carried to the four corners of the world.
Such an ecclesiology has immediate implications for the church as a disciplined community living under the lordship of Christ, a community of ethical discernment. The church as a missionary community is always aware of its pilgrim character, and its first loyalty is to Christ and his body in both its universal and local manifestation, rather than to the kingdoms of this world. Anything which might compromise its missionary task must be rejected. It witnesses to a kingdom which is of a different order from that of this world.
Cattell believes that mission must start from the Great Commission, not only a central theme in the New Testament, but a central theme throughout all of Scripture. He remarks that if the Gospels authors would not have penned the Great Commission, it would not matter because we would still have the implicit command to go (Cattell, 1981:1). For Cattell, the Gospels offer a full picture of the the commission as it progressed through the various evangelist’s accounts. Mark’s version is a bit simplistic (Mark 16:15) in that it does not discuss disciple-making, which makes Matthew 18-20 a far more complete reading of the commission’s prescription by showing the need for an actual harvest in our missionary act (Cattell, 2). John’s gospel (20:21-22), being the latest and most developed, is what Cattell finally lands on as the central key to mission because of its focus on Jesus. Cattell suggests that Jesus becomes the primary example for the church’s mission, he says: [Read more]
This is a part of a series I will be doing on Cattell and his contributions to the Friends Church and missiology. Everett Cattell is an important figure when it comes to missiology within the Friends Church. He and his wife Catherine De Vol were sent to India in 1936 where they spent 21 years working together as missionaries. There he had the opportunity to work alongside a number of different missions organizations and even got to know Leslie Newbigin and Donald McGavran, two of missiology’s most influential people of the last 50 years. In 1957, he and Catherine returned to the US where he was made the superintendent of Ohio Yearly Meeting (Damascus) for three years. In 1960, he became the president of Malone College in Canton, Ohio and worked there for 12 years (Abbott, 2006:41-42). [Read more]
Yesterday, The Quaker Ranter, Martin Kelley, and I sat down over video (he’s in NJ) and had a conversation about some of the difficulties with insider Quaker lingo and the problems that presents for “outsiders.” We also discussed this in relation to using YouTube as a way to get the word out, and how we might go about doing something like this. The conversation is the first (trial) run of a series Martin will be conducting, something I personally look forward to. I enjoyed being the Guinea Pig.
In class last week we discussed James Wm. McClendon’s baptist theological vision. His small ‘b’ baptist vision has five characteristics of the church that standout as a good framework from which any theology should be done. These five points are:
Biblicism - Acceptance of the Bible as authoritative in faith and practice, or faith and obedience. This doesn’t necessarily entail literalism or a tight, fundamentalist reading of the Bible. Instead, it points to the particular role the Bible plays in shaping the kinds of disciples the church makes.
Mission - A focus on evangelism, every member is obligated to bear witness even if it brings persecution. For McClendon, who writes from the free church tradition, evangelism isn’t equated to a door-to-door style of converting, but rather a holistic approach to embodying the kingdom of God, which does include proclamation but isn’t limited to it.
Liberty - The competancy of the believer to stand and face to face God, without the need of a priest, mediator or the state. This resonates deeply with Quaker sentiments about the immediacy of God’s Spirit.
Discipleship - A life transformed by the formation of Christ and brought in line with the community of God. For McClendon Baptism marks the entrance into this community.
Community - The church shares in a narrated life together, tied to the Biblical story and rooted in the historic testimonies of those who have gone before us. McClendon suggests that the Lord’s supper is the primary sign of this narrative unity.
