Apparently Vlad Putin is not the only one who wants to relive the glory of days gone by, W. Robert Godfrey (click here for a bio) wants to too. Only the dreams dancing around in his head are not about Mother Russia. And he wrote about that back in 1993 (click here for the article, click there an extensive quoting of his article) and the times appear to have not changed things. The object of his affection is conservative Reformed Theology and its current status in traditionally reformed churches like the Presbyterian Church and the Christian Reformed Church.
But Godfrey's model of thought for framing the issue ironically sounds Marxist. For whereas Marx is heavily criticized by religiously conservative Christian theologians, like Godfrey, for seeing the world as a conflict between oppressors and the oppressed, Godfrey sees the status of conservative Reformed theology in his denomination, the CRC (Christian Reformed Church) and of conservative Protestantism in America as being part of the establishment or part of the disestablishment. And the article being reviewed today is about how Christians who follow conservative Reformed Theology--some ask if there is any other kind of Reformed Theology--should see their calling in today's CRC and the Presbyterian churches too.
Godfrey's article is about how true, or conservative, Reformed theologians and lay people can react to a state of having lost controlling power of their situation of the group they are in. Godfrey states that they must act as missionaries. And part of being missionaries must include both knowing their doctrine and its history as well as being kind and speaking the truth in love.
Godfrey does provide an interest insight into his perspective and approach when talking about reliance on the Reformed Tradition for their understanding of the Scriptures:
In evaluating our Reformed commitments our ultimate authority must be the Bible. At the heart of our Reformed faith is sola Scriptura. But as we study the Bible let us not be isolated from our theology and history. It is too easy for us to be stampeded by modern questions and answers in interpreting the Bible if we are not intimately acquainted with our Reformed tradition. Before we change. before we accept “new, fresh” ideas from the Bible, let us ask why our forebears thought differently. They read the Bible too! Why did they come to conclusions so far from our new ones? If Reformed people thought or did something for three hundred years or more, should there not be among Reformed people today a presumption that they were right? At least we must be sure we really understand their reading of the Bible before we reject it in favor of our own.
In particular, we need to pay special attention to the underlined part of the quote--the rest of the quote provides a context for that statement. In writing what he wrote, Godfrey demonstrates that he is very much a traditionalist--btw, traditionalists can come in all kinds of ideologies. He is a traditionalist who was and still is very much disturbed by the changes he has been witnessing.
There is one thing we should note about traditionalists. It is that they are a mirror image of narcissists. That is because both elevate a certain time period above all others to the extent that they believe that their selected time period(s) have everything to teach those from other time periods and have little to nothing to learn from them--that statement borrows the phraseology of something Martin Luther King Jr said when speaking about Western arrogance and against the Vietnam War.
So while narcissists elevate the present over other time periods in such ways that it makes it difficult for them to learn from the past, traditionalists elevate selected times from the past in ways that makes it difficult for them to learn from the present. In short, traditionalists, and old people like myself, rely too heavily on the past to understand and respond to the present.
Having said all of that, the main point of this review of Godfrey's article has not been made yet. That main point is that by viewing intramural denominational battles as a struggle between the Establishment vs the Disestablished, Godfrey inadvertently gives a picture of today's culture wars and political scene in America. In all of these cases, Established vs. the Disestablished rather than an egalitarian approach where there is a greater, but not absolute, push for influence by collaboration and cooperation by all groups so that no group is marginalized. And if this analysis is true, we see part of the background for the conservative side of America's culture wars and political battles. It is all about ruling over others or being ruled over by them.
To a certain extent, it is more appropriate for there to be an Establishment vs. Disestablishment to exist in the Church because it is there where truth is not determined by democracy, but by revelation, by God's Word. But such should not be the case in a society that resides in a democratic setting. Yet, many of my fellow religiously conservative Christians see America's culture as the battleground for their quest to become part of America's Cultural Establishment. And with the mindset that either one is ruling over or one is ruled over even though that being ruled over can occur in a variety of ways and degrees. Of course that mindset for religiously conservative Christians like mysef is reinforced by the belief that we have God's Word on our side and thus some of us feel entitled to seek and hold onto our place as being the Establishment.
And now we should bring up again the points being made before about traditionalists. For in the lust of religiously conservative Christians' for taking back our place as ruling over or controlling American society to a significant degree, we are struggling to restore the past, to elevate and bring back our traditions. That means that we will not give a willing ear to modernity or Post Modernism for any significant time because we believe that our traditions put us in a place where we believe we have everything to teach Modernism and Post Modernism and little if anything to learn from them. And our reluctance or even refusal to listen to others besides ourselves not only causes hardships for others, we hurt ourselves with such arrogance and we cause harm to the reputation of the Gospel.
And so this struggle that Godfrey wrote about 29 years ago still provides a model not just for the struggles that exist in some denominations today, but also in American society and culture.
