A Salvationist and a member of the SoF Steering Committee, Duncan Park urges us to rethink our antipathy towards Evangelical Christianity and enjoy what he calls “Religion in the Mode of Passion: the evangelical experience”.
“Evangelicalism is explicit sensual spirituality. All acts of religion are spiritual foreplay culminating in the supreme act of love.”
A Little Serenity Test
On your Soul of India tour, a young man in fetching saffron challenges you: “Have you met the Buddha on the road?” Your response? Does your chest tighten in moral outrage?
Do your eyes pop with intellectual apoplexy? Of course not. You just answer the question and move on.
On your way to Sainsburys, a pallid youth in floral tee shirt challenges you: “Do you know the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour?” Your response? Let me guess. You feel an almost uncontrollable urge to rip out his gladsome-minded throat and bury him alive in a pit of scriptural contradictions? Of course you do, only you just flunked the serenity test.
You also failed the acid test of enlightened non-realism — that all metaphysical systems are equidistant from non-realism and obey the Cupitt theorem that a slither of realism is infinite and equal in any religion. Even Buddhism, that hot contender for slitherlessness, has little pricks to puncture the Void. All nonsense is equal, except evangelical nonsense, which is less equal than others. What is it about evangelicalism that can make rationalists irrational, humanists inhumane and even Quakers go ballistic? Could our attitude be a teensy bit pathological?
Are we a bunch of intellectual thugs (masquerading as rational humanists) who detest those who don’t know their philosophers-times-table and have the nerve to pose ultimate questions in the street?
The Mode of Ignorance
Fun it might be, but evangelical bashing betrays our own considerable ignorance about what makes this creature tick. I think we should be told. A few myths need debunking: Evangelicals are ipso facto fundamentalist.
Wrong. Fundamentalism is a trans-Atlantic virus affecting dominant white males making them amazingly angry about everything, particularly facts. It is not generic to evangelicalism, which is largely female, sizably black, rather young and very cheerful.
Fundamentalists are viewed as tiresome “doctrine police” by most evangelicals who do not concern themselves much with doctrine having more important business on hand, like singing.
Evangelicals are ipso facto supernaturalist.
Wrong. The notion that evangelicals are a bunch of snake handling, arsenic swigging miracle hunters is colourful and about as much to do with reality as “The X Files” has to do with science.
Religious fiction like science fiction is a genre that imagines possibilities. “Evangelicals are people in love. It is the oldest love-story in history — the love between man and deity”.
It is entertaining and occasionally enlightening. The “story” of (any) religion is a spiritual epic that only the most doctrinaire rationalist would confuse with supernaturalism.
Evangelicals do not “believe” this stuff. They dance it.
Evangelicals are ipso facto realist.
Wrong. We are staring too hard at the scenery and missing the plot.
Realism is a theatrical device where all action takes place within the brackets of an “agreed” dramatic metaphor. There is no need to rush around dismantling the props or putting inverted commas to all the dialogue (“honestly folks, I’m not really Hamlet”). The “Salvation Plan” is a loose plot. Like opera, the words can be silly but just listen to that music! Whether or not the stage “really” exists is secondary to the drama being performed on it, which certainly does.
Evangelicals are ipso facto anti-intellectual.
Wrong. Evangelicalism is non-intellectual not anti-intellectual. Faith came before reason. It cannot be proved, improved or disproved by argument.
Faith is daft. The concept of a “reasonable faith” is nonsense, a contradiction masquerading as a paradox. You might as well talk about a “reasonable orgasm” — which, as it happens, gets us right to the point.
Evangelicalism is religion in the mode of passion, sensual spirituality.
The Mode of Passion
Evangelicals are people in love. It is the oldest love-story in history — the love between man and deity. They are besotted with God. It is that simple.
Except, of course, it is not that simple. While all Christian traditions celebrate the “love” of God (agape), in the “evangelical experience” this takes on the more specific meaning of being “in love” (eros) with God (for “God” read Jesus). This is romantic love of a most singular kind and the entire evangelical enterprise is predicated on it. Forget the hardware: the politics, morality, theology — Jesus is the software that runs the evangelical programme.
Duncan Park’s Beginners’ Guide
Rumours of a Divine Lover (testimonies) are confirmed by messengers (preachers) who invite us (gospel) to meet with him (church). Arrogantly, we refuse (sin) but so insistent is his pursuit we relent (repentance). Overwhelmed by his beauty we change our mind (conversion) and become his lover. This surrender frees us (salvation) filling us with such intense joy we declare our passion for him openly (witnessing). We study his love-letters (Bible). We sing our love songs (hymns). We whisper sweet nothings (prayer). We try to understand our relationship (doctrines) while our passion moves irresistibly towards its consummation in the act of love (worship) when we become one (sacrament) and he fills us with himself (infilling). Merging with him, we transcend our humanity (holiness) and experience the eternal moment (sanctification). With his love inside us (Spirit) we bear fruit (converts) and care for his children everywhere (missions). Our deepest desire is to serve him (ministry) and remain one (discipleship) with him forever (Heaven).
That’s it folks. The torrid evangelical love story and all in the best possible taste. If it offends those of a sanctimonious disposition, sorry but sexuality nicked eroticism from religion. We just want our ball back.
“Faith is daft. The concept of a reasonable faith is nonsense, a contradiction masquerading as a paradox. You might as well talk about a reasonable orgasm.”
More, evangelicalism is explicit sensual spirituality. All acts of religion are spiritual foreplay culminating in the supreme act of love, the ecstatic union of believer with deity.
The Mode of Goodness
I think this metaphor [see box] gets evangelicalism about right.
God is for lovers not intellectuals.
He is a fragrance, not an argument.
The “tyranny of superior knowledge” must be resisted. The Sea of Faith is not an Institute for Religious Nihilism. Self-indulgent nihilism is so much spiritual warm spit. Theologically correct neo-Puritans (whose worst nightmare is that someone somewhere is still enjoying religion) should know that card-carrying members have every right to make love to God among the ruins of realism. We need not stare into the empty tomb of non-realism but move quickly to post-realism: beyond know-all-ology and feel-ology to be-ology.
The fact that this is a linguistic resurrection presents no problem for evangelicals. The “word” is life. They only have a problem with naive-nonrealism, which takes God’s non-existence “literally”. Evangelicalism can be as emotionally radical as philosophical or moral theology ever was.
Love God and believe what you like.
The metaphor is the experience.
Faith works backwards from experience. Whatever the “question” we are the answer. All evangelical doctrines are “personal”. “You ask me how I know he lives, He lives within my heart” says a popular chorus; not in orbit, not even in be-sandled Galilean theology, but in the emotional paradigm, where else? An impersonal Jesus simply cannot exist. The “God of love” is “real” because your love is his existence.
Beware of ex-realists who cannot stop talking about their ex-God and how awful he is for not existing; they probably need to justify taking religion for all they can in their acrimonious divorce.
The sad fact is they never knew how to have a “real” (ie non-realist) relationship with a deity. They are still realists, ie “realist non-realists”. Too much slobbering over pin-up philosophers has left them spiritually impotent. Now they vent their spleen on those who can still perform the spiritual act. Lovers should ignore them.
Evangelicalism defends its right to explore humanity as a religious creation, an experience to be enjoyed rather than a problem to be solved: to be playful, imaginative, wistful, enigmatic, paradoxical, and, above all, passionate — not a bad CV that.
Duncan Park is writing a book to be called, “The Love that Dares to Speak its Name: Exploring a Post-Realist Evangelical Spirituality”.