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A 21st Century Reformation: Recover the Supernatural
Leaders from Malaysia, Argentina, Nigeria, and the United States share their dreams for major changes in the global church.
To facilitate a truly global conversation, we ask Christian leaders from around the world to respond to the Global Conversation's lead articles. These points of view do not necessarily represent Christianity Today magazine or the Lausanne Movement. They are designed to stimulate discussion from all points of the compass and from different segments of the Christian community. Please add your perspective by posting a comment so that we can learn and grow together in the unity of the Spirit.
The Reformation of the 16th century was a revolution of mythic proportions. Scholars and pastors with fresh scriptural insights took advantage of revolutionary changes in the arts, science, humanities, politics, travel, and commerce to turn the Western world upside down. It marked both a return to biblical roots and a leap into the future. In the 21st century, what major changes in the church should Christians be hoping and working for? In the final installment of the Global Conversation, four key leaders from four continents reveal their hopes.
One big surprise of the 20th century was the dramatic growth of churches in the non-Western world. A bigger surprise was that the fastest-growing churches were strongly supernaturally oriented. "In this thought world, prophecy is an everyday reality, while faith healing, exorcism, and dream visions are all basic components of religious sensibility," religion historian Philip Jenkins has noted. This is true of African Initiated Churches, Pentecostal churches in Latin America, house churches in China and India, and numerous others.
I grew up in a thought world where ancestral spirits, demonic powers, "gods," and miracles of all kinds abounded. Modern education, the most powerful force behind secularization, almost succeeded in getting me to toss out everything as superstition. Some of these supernatural elements clearly are, but not all. A careful reading of the Bible and the sheer weight of empirical evidence eventually brought me back to a supernatural Christianity. In this, I found myself out of sync with much of Western theology. Here liberals were at least consistent, but not evangelicals. Most liberals denied the supernatural both in the Bible and in the present; evangelicals fought tooth and nail to defend the miraculous in the Bible, but rarely could cope with it in real life.
It is now recognized that much of Western thought has been domesticated by modernity, with its roots in Enlightenment thought. The autonomous rationalism initiated by Descartes and the narrow empiricism pioneered by Hume have so emasculated the modern worldview that a mechanistic universe is all that remains. The resultant denial of the supernatural has crippled much of theology, leading to at least two serious consequences.
First, most present-day Western systematic and pastoral theologies fail to address the demonic at both the personal and cosmic levels. Many scholars deny or ignore the whole subject, explaining away numerous related biblical passages: Paul's references to "principalities and powers" are reduced to sociological structures; sin and evil are discussed without reference to the demonic. Such theologies sit well with modernity, but they provide no help for evangelists and pastors ministering to people who are under spiritual bondage. If these issues are not properly addressed, many non-Westerners will find the gospel impotent and irrelevant.
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ms muse
Come on, guys. This is funny. It's a joke. Don't take yourselves so seriously.
Matt J
At least spell Ingmar Bergman properly. Also, I'm not sure what you guys are going for here. Is this an attempt to draw a parallel between semi-decent taste in cinema and worldliness in the "hipster church"? It seems callous and lacking in grace (not to mention lacking in journalistic integrity, or dialogue with ANYBODY whose church was detailed in the article. perhaps that would have been a useful perspective, but heck, when painting with a wide brush it's good to leave other sizes aside.) I'm sorry, this is just frustrating.
Grenville greenroom2001@hotmail.com
What a silly article. Hipsters DO NOT LIKE being called Hipsters! And what a surprise, at 49 I find I am a Hipster. Except... DON"T CALL ME THAT!
Elisa Melbourne
I find this rather ridiculous. Are christians becoming more relevant to the world that they're irrelevant to God's purpose? And how in the world would you 'research' what so-called "hip christians" are into anyway? The medium may change but the message shouldn't and that should really be the focus for any generation. Honestly, give some of us "hip christians" credit who also happen to have strong moral convictions and are not tossed too and fro by the latest social fad infiltrating the church....
Dale Fincher
I'll comment on what I know... the authors. I cannot believe some of these authors are on the same list... some are considered great literature by liberal arts programs and the Academy of Letters and some are just pop-cultural disposable stuff that found a trendy evangelical readership. If half of the good authors on this list influenced the hipsters, the hipsters would be larger-minded and less hip. Heck, if the church in general could just start with learning C. S. Lewis, a dramatic shift would happen. The evangelical church, which claims to love Lewis so well, still hasn't caught up with him 50 years later.
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