Off Site Reviews

By background I am Baptist.  I grew up American Baptist, I worked for a while for a Southern Baptist Association of churches.  But I have moved a bit away from my Baptist roots.  I am more sacramental in my theology these days.  I am less concerned with the method and timing of baptism.  And I am much less interested in the autonomy of the local church.  So it may be odd that I attend a mega-church that never does the eucharist as part of their Sunday morning service, that does not participate in the church year or use the Lectionary for scripture.

Theologically I am more oriented toward a more liturgical church system. But culturally my worship background is low church and my theology of church is oriented toward outreach and evangelism.  So I participate in a church that is organized around having low barriers to entry for those that have left the church or have never been a part of the church.  I do not think everyone should be in churches like mine.  I am thankful that many people are not.

But I do think that many people are resistant to more liturgical churches out of ignorance instead of real theology.

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Last year there was a bit of an internet hubbub when a well known Christian Reformed blogger reviewed a a well known book by an offbeat female author.  The details really don’t matter.  But one of the main complaints about the book was that author flirted with mysticism.  The Reformed blogger suggested that mysticism is outside the mainstream of Christianity and bordered on heresy if it did not actually step over the line.  The blogger got a lot of push back from the author’s fans for dismissing her book.  But what was more concerning to me (because I have not read the book in question) was the the blogger was dismissing the long history of Christian mysticism.  Eventually the blogger apologized for the way that he criticized the book, but he did not apologize for dismissing mysticism.

Clearly the church has always had its stream of mystics.  And yes, some of those mystics have skirted the line of orthodoxy.  But there are many groups that skirt the line of orthodoxy.  We do not dismiss all academics, because some academics skirt the line of orthodoxy.  We do not dismiss all missionaries because some cross over the line into syncretism in their attempt to spread the gospel.  I found it interesting that in the comments of the review, there were people that denied that mysticism had always been a part of mainstream Christianity.  I specifically mentioned Bernard of Clairvaux as an example of a very mainstream mystic and was told that Bernard and many other middle age Catholics were an example of what is wrong with mysticism.  To which it was clear to me, that these reformed commenters did not know anything about the stream of Christianity that they were criticizing.

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