The Biggest Theological Changes I’ve Seen in My Lifetime

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 19^th 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 21^st 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 18^th~20^th 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?

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* 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. 

What about Hell? In Memory of Jitsuo Morikawa

Most of you likely have never heard of Jitsuo Morikawa, a Japanese American who was born 110 years ago and died on July 20, 1987.

It was about 25 years before his death that I heard Morikawa speak for the first time—and the main thing I remember from that occasion is what he said about hell. 

Jitsuo Morikawa was born in British Columbia, Canada, in 1912. His Japanese parents were Buddhists, but when he was 16, Jitsuo became a Christian. After graduating from UCLA, he enrolled in The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS).

The year after graduating from SBTS in 1940, he was interned in a relocation center for Americans of Japanese ancestry. From 1944 to 1956 he was a pastor of the First Baptist Church in Chicago and then served for 19 years in the headquarters of the American Baptist Churches.

In 1976-77 Morikawa was the interim pastor of the prestigious Riverside Church in New York City, and I had the privilege of attending a Sunday morning service there and hearing him preach during that time.

Morikawa came back to SBTS to speak when I was a graduate student there. I don’t remember what his talk was about, but during the discussion that followed he was asked a question, or perhaps questioned, about hell.

I have never forgotten his response. He said that it was strange to him that so many Christians seemed to be disappointed and disapproving whenever he or anyone suggested that perhaps there was not a literal hell where non-Christians are punished forever.

Morikawa was questioned, and his views on hell were opposed, by many who heard him that evening, for, as was included in the revised Baptist Faith and Message in 1963, Southern Baptists generally believed that after death, “The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment.”

I have dealt with the issue of hell in two previous blog posts. The most recent was on Jan. 20, 2019. In that article, I raised a question that was similar to what I heard Morikawa say in the early 1960s:

Here is the biggest question of all: Why do conservative Christians get so upset with the idea that most of the people of the world—that is, all who do not trust in Jesus as their Savior—might not be punished in Hell for all eternity?

Then back in 2011, I made a blog post titled “Bell on Hell.” It was related to Rob Bell’s controversial book titled Love Wins. I encourage you to read that article (again).

Brian McLaren writes briefly about hell on pages 193-4 of his new book Do I Stay Christian? Hell, however, is the underlying theme of The Last Word and the Word After That (2005), the third volume of McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian trilogy.⁺⁺

The 17^th chapter of that book is called “Deconstructing Hell.” That chapter, and that book, and that trilogy are well worth reading with thoughtful consideration. It was reading those books that led me to become a firm “fan” of McLaren.

In his new book, McLaren speaks of “repurposing hell.” That means that he is thinking hell “is not a threat of divine retribution in the afterlife but a dire warning about the inevitable negative consequences of harmful behaviors in this life—like war, ecological overshoot, or gross economic inequality.”

Partly because of hearing what Morikawa said in the early 1960s, through the years I have questioned the traditional Christian belief about hell. And because of McLaren’s 2005 novel, I questioned that traditional position even more.

The first sentence of McLaren’s introduction to that book is straight to the point: “I believe that God is good.” And then in the 17^th chapter he has Casey, one of his characters, say that “if hell seems to have the last word, there’s got to be a word after that.”

Pastor Dan, the central character, asks her what that would be, and Casey says, “Grace . . . I think the last word is always grace” (p. 101).**

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⁺⁺ This month I have reread this book and (again) found it to be of great value. If any of you harbor troubling questions/doubts regarding the traditional (conservative) doctrine of hell, I encourage you to read this book (which is a serious theological book written in the form of a novel).

** I didn’t consciously remember those words when I wrote my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018), but the last chapter of that book is “#30  God’s First and Last Word Is Always Grace.”

What about Annihilationism?

Hell is a topic that produces a lot of heated debate. Whether or not Hell is a place of eternal torment has recently been a hot topic at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri. One burning issue is about the truth or falsity of annihilationism.

SBU, Briefly

June and I met as freshmen at Southwest Baptist College in 1955, when it was still a junior college. It was a conservative school then, but not really a fundamentalist one. Later it became a four-year university and through the years has maintained a rather moderately conservative stance.

During my family’s first missionary “furlough” in 1971-72, we lived in Bolivar and I taught a couple of courses at SBU. In 2016 our beloved granddaughter Katrina graduated from SBU—and married her college sweetheart soon after graduating as June and I did in 1957.

During our first year of retirement from 38 years as missionaries to Japan, we lived in Bolivar again for a year, and I had some contact with the faculty at SBU—especially Dr. Rodney Reeves, Dean of the Courts Redford College of Theology and Ministry. Dr. Reeves was/is an impressive scholar, a powerful preacher, and a fine human being.

Toward the end of 2018, however, Dr. Reeves and others in Redford College became the target of criticism from conservative/fundamentalist Christians, especially by Clint Bass, an associate professor at Redford College.

Annihilationism, Briefly

Primary among the charges of erroneous theological beliefs held by Dr. Reeves was that of annihilationism, the theological position that affirms the destruction of non-believers rather than their eternal punishment.

This position is also referred to as “conditional immortality.” The human soul, it asserts, is not inherently immortal; the latter is a Greek idea, not a biblical one. As the Bible says, “It is [God] alone who has immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16).

While in seminary I began to shift to this position under the teaching of Dr. Dale Moody, who eludicates the teaching in his book The Hope of Glory (1966, pp. 105~110).That was long before the thoroughgoing affirmation of annihilationism by Edward Fudge, a pastor/scholar in the Churches of Christ tradition.

Fudge (1944~2017) was one of the most vocal evangelicals to affirm annihilationism. His 420-page book, The Fire that Consumes, was first published in 1982 and the third, definitive edition was issued in 2013. 

In addition to Fudge’s book, I also recommend the 2012 movie “Hell and Mr. Fudge,” which engagingly depicts Fudge’s personal and scholarly quest that led to his vigorous advocacy of annhiliationism.

Questions, Briefly

Here are just two of the many questions that might be raised about this hot issue:

** Why did Dr. Reeves post a Dec. 21 article on his blog under the title “Why I’m not an annihilationist”? Since he is employed by a Baptist-supported school, he likely felt considerable pressure to show his agreement with Baptist Faith and Message.

According to that document, with which all who are financially supported by Southern Baptists are required to agree, clearly states: “The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment.”

** Here is the biggest question of all: Why do conservative Christians get so upset with the idea that most of the people of the world—that is, all who do not trust in Jesus as their Savior—might not be punished in Hell for all eternity?

There are many good people in this country who are not Christian believers—but I think especially of all my fine non-Christian Japanese friends. Why do Christian conservatives insist that the annihilation of such people is insufficient and that they must be consigned to eternal torture in Hell?

TTT #10 For Christians, Jesus Must be Lord as Well as Savior

In the ninth chapter of Thirty True Things . . . (TTT), I emphasize that Christians must be careful when they call Jesus “Lord,” but the following chapter accentuates what seems to be just the opposite: Christians must be careful to call Jesus “Lord” and to mean it. In other words, for Christian believers, Jesus must be Lord and not just Savior.

Confessing Jesus as Savior

For historic Christianity, nothing in all the world—or in the world beyond—is more important than being “saved” by Jesus. Although there are differences in interpretation and implementation, confessing Jesus as Savior has been the fundamental basis for Christianity through the centuries.

Beginning in New Testament times and continuing to the present, salvation in Christianity has regularly been interpreted as the redemption of human beings from the punishment of sin (eternal death, Hell) and the gift/promise of everlasting life (in Heaven).

While the Catholic Church has interpreted salvation as the result of receiving, willingly or otherwise, the sacrament of baptism, the Protestant tradition has emphasized personal confession of faith in Jesus as the means of salvation.

In both cases, though, the result of salvation was essentially the same: escape from eternal torment which awaited all the “unsaved” at the time of death.

Objecting to Jesus as Savior Only

Especially in much traditional evangelical Christianity, salvation was (is?) largely presented as a type of “fire insurance.” It was/is a very good policy to have so one will not “fry when they die.”

When I was a boy attending a conservative Baptist church, many of the revival preachers I heard were related, religiously, to the legendary “fire and brimstone” evangelists who did so much to expand the membership of evangelical churches in England and especially in the United States from the 1730s through the 20th century.

They were quite successful in expanding the number of Christians—but they were also responsible for fostering a limited view of what salvation really means.

The revivalists, as well as many (most?) local evangelical pastors, preached effectively about the certainty of escaping Hell and going to Heaven through faith in Jesus Christ. Their main message was almost exclusively individualistic and otherworldly; that is, it was about the salvation of individuals from damnation upon death.

The emphasis was mostly on Jesus as Savior. Little, if anything, was said about the importance of Jesus being Lord now. Similarly, there was hardly any emphasis on the Kingdom of God. Its presence in the present world and the necessity of Christians being a conscious part of that Kingdom was seldom mentioned.

Confessing Jesus as Lord

It was the more liberal churches, and church organizations, that began emphasizing the Kingdom of God and the Lordship of Christ in ways that were largely absent in the conservative, evangelical Churches. That contrasting emphasis led to the formation of competing world organizations of churches.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) was established in 1948, and the World Evangelical Fellowship was established in 1951 and its name changed to World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) in 2001.

Through the years, the WCC put more and more stress on social justice issues, but the WEA continued to emphasize that the central mission of the church should be for the primary purpose of evangelism in the traditional sense, that is, saving people for eternal life in Heaven.

As I point out in a later chapter in TTT, the best choice, in this case as in most others, is both/and rather than either/or. That is why I like the following diagram—and why I think emphasizing Jesus as Lord is important for moving traditional evangelical Christians toward the middle. 

[Please click here to read the tenth chapter of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT) upon which this article is based.]

Burning Bernie

Last week Sen. Bernie Sanders made some strong statements about Pres. Trump’s nominee for Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Sanders has been severely criticized for those utterances, even by some who are not Republicans or conservative evangelicals.

Bernie’s Statements

Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee, appeared before the Senate Budget Committee on June 8. There he was subjected to stiff questioning by Sen. Sanders. At issue was what Vought had written last year in support of Wheaton College’s decision to fire Larycia Hawkins, a tenured professor.

As you may remember, Hawkins was terminated over the controversy sparked by her donning a hijab in a gesture of solidarity with Muslims in the U.S. She also declared that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God.”

In defending Wheaton’s action, Vought wrote that Hawkins’s views were mistaken. “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology, they do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ, His Son, and they stand condemned,” he asserted.

In response to those remarks, Sanders declared that what Vought wrote was “hateful,” “Islamaphobic,” and “an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world.”

He went on to say that Vought “is not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.” Further, “This country since its inception has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to overcome discrimination of all forms, whether it is racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and Islamaphobia.”

He added, “Over the years we have made progress to becoming a less discriminatory and more tolerant society, and we must not go backwards.”  

Burning Bernie

As might be expected, Sen. Sanders was widely attacked from the religious right. Some called him bigoted against evangelical Christians.

I was surprised that even some moderate Christians were also quite critical of Bernie. For example, Amanda Tyler, the new Executive Director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC), wrote critically of Sanders on June 9 (here).

Tyler averred that “Sanders’ line of questioning imposed a religious test, which is forbidden by Article VI of the Constitution.”

Michael Gerson wrote along the same lines in a June 12 op-ed piece in the Washington Post.

Agreeing with Bernie

As you might guess, there were also some who wrote in support of Sanders’ position. Here is the link to one such well-written piece, and I basically agree with it.

While I am a strong supporter of religious liberty and usually agree with the BJC, I think their (Tyler’s) criticism of Bernie missed the point.

What Vought said about Muslims, of course, he could also have said about Jews, or Buddhists—or about the large percentage of the population who do not profess faith in any religion. As a private citizen he has every right to hold to his religious convictions.

Is it not a problem, though, when people in public office openly state that everyone who has other, or no, religious beliefs is “condemned”? While personal beliefs can perhaps be intolerant, the stance of public officials must be for tolerance of people of all faiths. That, I think, was Bernie’s point.

Moreover, what Article VI of the Constitution says is that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” It doesn’t say that people can or should never be disqualified because of their religious beliefs.

Some people in the past held strong religious beliefs about the validity of slavery or of polygamy, and more recently some have held religious beliefs that condemn LGBT people. While such people have the freedom to hold such beliefs, should they be in public office?

Probably not. 

Bell on Hell

Rob Bell is a pastor and an author. Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, his new book published just this month, has created a lot of discussion, not only in Christian circles but in the secular world as well. The Wall Street Journal published a review of Bell’s new book in its March 18 issue, and this month he has also been interviewed on Good Morning America, Morning Joe, and other TV programs.

Bell (b. 1970), a graduate of Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary, is the founding pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI. His first book, Velvet Elvis (2005), was a bestseller, and his new book is already on the bestseller lists. It debuted on the USA Today Top 150 at #15 (based on sales through March 20), and on March 25, it was #4 among all books sold on Amazon.com.

Much of the interest in and criticism of Bell’s book is because of what he says about hell. He thinks that there is a hell, but it is a view far different from the traditional idea held by most conservative/evangelical Christians and by most Catholics. Bell understands hell as primarily the suffering that people experience now because of the bad choices they, or others, make.

From the very beginning of his book, Bell calls into serious question the view that “a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better” (p. viii).

“Hell” is the title of Bell's third chapter, and there he acknowledges that “God gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it” (p. 72). This is due to “the freedom that love requires” (p. 111). (One of my seminary professors used to say that hell is “Love’s rejection of the rejection of love.”)

But the lack of love creates hells for others now. And Bell observes, “Often the people most concerned about others going to hell when they die seem less concerned with the hells on earth right now, while the people most concerned with the hells on earth right now seem the least concerned about hell after death” (pp. 78-79). Bell prefers the latter position.

Not surprisingly, some conservative/fundamentalist Christians have staunchly criticized Bell’s views on hell and related matters. And a Methodist pastor in North Carolina has even been dismissed from his pastorate because of his positive statements about Bell’s book. (You can read about the pastor and church here.)

As for me, I was favorably impressed with Bell’s book. At the very least, it gives us a lot that we need to think about seriously and to discuss. I wondered, though, why he did not deal with the position known as annihilationism. I write about that idea and other matters related to hell in my The Limits of Liberalism (pp. 225-7), ending that section by saying that my position ”does not embrace the harshness of the traditional view, but still takes sin and its consequences much more seriously than the position held by most Christian liberals.”