Flirtation with Neo-orthodoxy

Although the tension and frustration was growing at home and church I didn’t blink twice and continued to explore my own spiritual path outside of the confines and influence of the Evangelical subculture. I am not sure why I continued down this path especially when you consider the great risk to my relationship with my family, friends and Evangelical peers but at the time I felt like I needed a faith grounded in “this world” and the Reformed tradition provided what was lacking in my evangelical experience. While Schaeffer served as an important religious mentor during the 1980’s a new mentor came to my attention in the early 1990s. I don’t remember who introduced me to the writings of Jacque Ellul but my interest in technology and it’s relationship to the modern obsession with technique would eventually lead me to Ellul. Like Schaeffer, Ellul was a prolific writer who had a fairly substantial world wide following. Ellul’s area of expertise is technology/technique but he has also written a substantial number of books on such topics as Marxism, prayer, propaganda, money,The Kingdom of God, politics and anarchy. In his writings Ellul sites Barth, Kierkegaard, and neo-orthodoxy as the major influences in his understanding and interpretation of Christianity and culture. Ellul had a tremendous influence on my thinking. Ellul’s writings explore the modern obsessions with technique, technology, money, power and allegiance to political ideologies. Personally I found Ellul’s writings fascinating, insightful, right on, and for the next four or five years I became an Ellul apologist and the gulf between myself and the Evangelical community widened because Ellul was a part of the neo-orthodox camp and the likes of Barth and company were suspect in the minds of many Evangelicals. In my personal life the tension and frustration was mounting in my marriage and my relationship with the leadership of the church because of my decision to embrace an egalitarian position in my marriage and in the community of the church. My decision to become an egalitarian created a lot of insecurity for my wife and brought into question my allegiance to an inerrant view of the Bible and this marked the beginning of the end for me in regards to leadership opportunities in the conservative evangelical subculture.


A Christian Anarchist is born

The last book of Jacques Ellul I remember reading was a book about Christian anarchy and while I don’t consider it one of his best books it did peak my interest in the subject of Christian anarchy. Over the years I have read my fair share of books but one of the most influential books I have ever read is Vernard Eller’s book Christian Anarchy. I still have a severely marked up copy laying around the house somewhere and from time to time I go back and reread all the highlighted passages. Christian Anarchy should not be confused with secular anarchy. Secular anarchy as I understand is generally associated with chaos/disorder but Christian anarchy encourages Christians to not make “absolute, uncritical alliances” to anyone, anything, any philosophy of life, any idea/ideology, or any institution, except God. Christian anarchists are not necessarily “against” anyone, institution, or any particular system of thought but rather emphasize keeping at arms length the powers and ideas of this world even those that explicitly wear the Christian label. This was radical stuff to me because my entire Christian life I had always associated myself with a particular person, denomination, tradition or set of ideas/beliefs and now I was challenged to abandon or at least reconsider my relationship with many of the allegiances that I had formed over the years. It was also a real challenge psychologically because I received a significant amount of emotional security from my various allegiances. The book really struck a nerve with me because it provided a comprehensive explanation for the angst I had been feeling for years regarding my own struggles and the growing estrangement from the evangelical subculture….In hindsight my shift to Christian Anarchy probably struck the nail in the coffin regarding my relationship with the Evangelical establishment because institutions are maintained, in large part, on the basis of the allegiance of it’s members and I was no longer willing to align myself with the institution of church and it’s particular vision of what a Christian “ought” to think and do. I don’t mean to imply that I wasn’t open to what my Evangelical brethren had to say or suggest. I just was no longer willing to go along with this or that simply because it carried an Evangelical label.