A Word from the South

On January 1618, 2003, the AMiA (Anglican Mission in America) held its annual conference at Pawleys Island, South Carolina. One of the principle speakers at the conference was Philip Jenkins, author of the Next Christendom. The primary thesis of this book is that the churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin America are becoming the center of Christendom. This is happening because Southern Churches proclaim a dynamic, living gospel, a faith badly needed in the countries of the Northern Hemisphere. AMiA believes this, and for that reason, invited Philip Jenkins to speak at their conference. In fact, AMiA itself is a mission of the Diocese of Rwanda, a missionary outreach of the African Church.

This, however, brings us to the question, one that lies at the heart of the differences between the Northern and Southern Churches. What is the secret of the phenomenal growth and spiritual authority found in the churches of the South? Or, to ask a related question, Why is the Episcopal Church in the United States so anemic by comparison? Let me begin to address these questions with a quotation from The Next Christendom: "If there is a single key area of faith and practice that divides Northern and Southern Christians, it is this matter of spiritual forces and their effects on the everyday human world. The issue goes to the heart of cultural definition and world views." (p. 123)

According to Jenkins, Southern Christians believe that the "everyday human world" is penetrated by powers and spiritual forcesGod, the risen Jesus, the Holy Spirit, evil spirits, the devil and his angels, principalities and powers. For many Christians in the North, however, the world is devoid of such forces. As a result, the statements of theology and the biblical language itself do not ultimately refer to spiritual powers, but to ordinary life seen "in depth," to use of phrase of Anglican theologian John Macquarrie. From this point of view, the supernatural world of the New Testament, as well as the "primitive" worldview of our southern neighbors, is a cultural artifact no longer credible in the world of the internet, space travel, and genetic engineering.

What must be said on this matter? The Southern Churches are right and we are wrong. They are right because they follow Jesus in this respect and we do not. A great many of our clergy, our theologians, and our laity, have not entered into the supernatural reality of the risen Jesus. Too few, far too few, have received the baptism of the Spirit, followed Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil, overcome the devil in Jesus' Name, and sorted out Truth from error through temptation, hard study, and personal crucifixion. Since so many have not entered this supernatural realm, they do not preach the gospel with power, nor do they heal the sick and cast out demons, nor do they teach the way to a living God, nor do they crucify the flesh with its lusts to walk in newness of life. That is what is missing in the Episcopal Church. It is missing because people don't believe it, and many who suspect it might be true, really don't want it.

The fact, however, that so many of our people seemingly do not live in a spiritual world does not mean there isn't one. There is, and it doesn't just exist south of the equator. There is a Holy Spirit, Jesus is alive, the devil does roam about like a roaring lion seeking those he can devour. All of us are subject to the power of sin and evil, and since so many of God's people lack spiritual authority, they are helpless against the "spiritual powers of the air." As a result, families are damaged, ministries wrecked, the gospel distorted. Even worse, when this corruption engulfs the leadership, the effects are especially devastating. Once corrupted, they corrupt others. They can no longer distinguish between good and evil, urging their followers, as the presiding bishop put it, to "embrace and reconcile the birds and the beasts, as well as reptiles and demons, however we might define them."

As this outrage takes place, the Church in the South is exploding. They are preaching the gospel, converting sinners, undergoing persecution, healing the sick, casting out demons, and doing the things the gospel proclaims on every page. Even as this happens, there were those in the North who, like Spong, consider such doings the fantasies of superstitious people who have barely emerged from animism, people who have failed to come to grips with the scientific revolution. Be that as it may, anyone who takes the New Testament seriously, anyone who wants to find out whether this supernatural world is real or not, can go to any number of churches, both within and without the Episcopal Church, and learn for themselves that the New Testament witness is not an artifact, nor is it simply a matter of world views. The supernatural world of the New Testament is the reality one encounters when one ministers in the power of the Spirit.

From this perspective, it simply isn't enough that one's thinking be orthodox. Jesus was orthodox. He taught the straight and narrow way. His teaching, however, was not divorced from his deeds of power. In the end, we cannot have a church where theologians produce one learned paper after another but rarely proclaim that Jesus is doing today what Scripture proclaims he did them. There is no theology apart God's act. An orthodox theology will go hand and glove with the proclamation of a living, supernatural God. In fact, I would maintain that unless one believes in a miraculous God, one cannot be orthodox. Schleiermacher was brilliant enough. He denied the supernatural, and as a result, he was driven into panentheism rather than a true doctrine of the Trinity. Without miracle, there is no orthodoxy. Schleiermacher, Tillich, Macquarrie, Bultmann, the Jesus Seminar, should be evidence enough.

We need to be orthodox like Athanasius. In order to proclaim a living God he wrote his Life of Anthony. He did not write it because wanted to get a Ph.D. and become an academic theologian. He wrote it because he believed that Jesus Christ did in Anthony what the New Testament proclaims he always did. He knew, then as now, that people needed a living God, not a dead God but a living Lord. Consider this,

Through him [Anthony] the Lord healed the bodily ailments of many present, and cleansed others from evil spirits. And He gave grace to Antony in speaking, so that he consoled many that were sorrowful, and set those at variance at one, exhorting all to prefer the love of Christ before all that is in the world.

Further, he fought a relentless theological battle against Arius, not simply because he wanted to be orthodox, but because he wanted it known and known decisively that God acted and acts to save in Jesus Christ. He repeatedly proclaimed that the risen Jesus did in his own day what Scripture proclaims he did in the flesh. He wanted the world to know that it was God, and not something less than God, who could and would do these things. For that reason, he ended his four orations against Arius with words of praise to the living triune God. He praised God because he had seen the face of God in the miraculous words and deeds of Jesus, the "manifestations of the Divinity, which are exhibited in the acts and operations of his human nature." Here are his final words,

He was before invisible in heaven even to the celestial powers themselves, but now by the union of His invisible nature with the visible, made visible to all. He is visible, I say, not in His invisible Godhead, but by those manifestations of the Divinity, which are exhibited in the acts and operations of His human nature; and this human nature He has entirely renewed by receiving it into a personal union with Himself. All honour and adoration be therefore ascribed to Him, who was in the beginning, and is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Yes, there is superstition. Yes, there are people who have failed to come to terms with the scientific revolution. But it isn't the Africans, the Asians, or the Latin Americans. We are the ones, falling prey to the modernist superstition that science has somehow eliminated the biblical message of a living, acting God. We have failed at a critical juncture, but God in his mercy has a word against us because he is for us. That word is the life and witness of the Southern Church, judging our intellectual hubris and the personal disdain we have for entering into our only hope, the great supernatural realities given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.

At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure." (Luke 10:21)

The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
2003.