Perhaps this needs to be seven posts rather than one, but at this point I am just listing and briefly describing what I consider to be the biggest theological changes I have seen in my lifetime—and these are not my personal shifts but what I’ve observed in the broad spectrum of Christianity.
#1 –
Widespread rejection of Hell. I list this first because of its impact on the following
changes. Emphasis on Hell was not only long the emphasis of Protestantism but
of Roman Catholicism as well.
One of the most well-known Protestant sermons was Jonathan
Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.” And early in the
19th century, revivalist preachers in the U.S. became known for
their “fire and brimstone” sermons. That was still quite common when I was a
boy/youth.
The Roman Catholic Church also taught for centuries that everyone
who was not baptized as a Catholic was bound to go to Hell when they died. That
position was drastically changed by the Second Vatican Council (1962~65).
And while emphasis on Hell is still much a part of
conservative evangelicalism, in Protestant Christianity at large that emphasis
has been quite widely rejected, or at least conspicuously ignored.
#2 –
Growing de-emphasis on Heaven. For far different reasons, but related to the above, is what
seems to me to be a significant decrease in the emphasis on Heaven in 21st
century Christianity. Heaven isn’t particularly denied, it just isn’t talked
about nearly as much as it used to be.
The Great Awakenings and evangelical preaching of the 18th~20th
centuries was about being “saved” from Hell in order to
go to Heaven after death. In the early decades of my life the “afterlife” was of
primary concern in most of Christianity, but that no
longer seems to be the case.
#3 –
Drastic decrease in world mission activity. Although it was never just for that purpose, the desire to
save people from Hell in order that they could go to Heaven was long a major
motivation for world mission activity of most Christian denominations.
When I went to Japan as a Baptist missionary in 1966, there
were not only conservative missionaries of various denominations, many of which
were more conservative than Southern Baptists then, but also many from the more
“liberal” Protestant denominations as well as Roman Catholics.
Some of the most prominent Christian schools in Japan were
founded by Catholic, Anglican, and “mainstream” Protestant missionaries. But by
the time I left Japan in 2004, there were hardly any Christian missionaries
left other than Southern Baptists and other conservative evangelicals.
#4 –
Emphasis on life in the here and now. Closely related to #2 above is the growing emphasis on the
importance of life in this world now. Even the understanding of the Kingdom of
God has broadly changed from being focused upon the world to come to a feature
of the world we live in now.
Contemporary Christianity seems to have increasingly embraced
the traditional Jewish position of “salvation” not being “about going to
heaven after death but about the flourishing of life in the present.”*
For example, emphasis on flourishing
in the present has for many years now been a part of the reflections of two popular
theological thinkers I greatly respect, “emergent”
Protestant public theologian and author Brian McLaren and Catholic (Franciscan)
priest Richard Rohr.
5)
De-emphasis and even rejection of substitutionary atonement. Since the blog post I made six
years ago today was about that doctrinal belief (see here), I won’t elaborate on this point
more now.
6) Change
in views related to sexual ethics. Because of the perceived clear positions of the Bible and
the teachings of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic Christianity long-held negative judgments against divorce, cohabitation, and homosexuality.
While there were always many “deviations,” Christianity long
held to a strong belief in the sanctity of marriage, which meant lifetime
monogamous marriage of a man and a woman with no intimate sexual relations condoned
outside of such a marriage.
In spite of strong emphasis on the traditional position by
some Christians, broadly speaking, to a large extent Christianity now seems no
longer to speak out against divorce or pre-marital sexual relations, and
there continues to be greater acceptance of the rights of LGBTQ people.
7)
Growth in ecumenical relations, including deep ecumenism. There is a long history
of Christian ecumenism—but an even longer history of Christian denominational “tribalism,”
which is what I mostly saw in my younger years.
But during my lifetime there has been not only an
ever-increasing move toward Christian denominations working together, a
movement from exclusivity to inclusivity, but also an increase in what is sometimes
called “deep ecumenism,” Christianity working with other religious traditions.**
What
would you readers add or subtract from this list? And which of these do I need to write more
about?
_____
* These words are from Jeorg Rieger
in his book Theology in the Capitalocene (2022), which I plan to
introduce more fully in the last blog post planned for this month.
** According to Chat GPT, “deep ecumenism” is a term
coined by Wayne Teasdale (1945~2004), a Catholic lay monk. His book The Mystic
Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (1999)
“is considered a seminal work in the field of deep ecumenism.” (I think I heard
that term before 1999, though.)
Matthew Fox, former Catholic and
now Episcopal priest, posted a “daily meditation” entitled “What
Is Deep Ecumenism? Why Now?” on Oct. 18, 2021.
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