Pastors need friends & mentors, too

It's an inelegant title, but "Needed: Pastor-Mentors for Emerging Ministers" by Stephen Baldwin comprehensively lays out the pastor's need for mentoring and encouraging relationships. Read closely, or you may miss his provocative suggestion that the solo pastorate may not be spiritually healthy. (I caught it largely because I have been thinking that for some time now.)

In a similar vein is Gordon Cook's "A Pastor's Grief and How to Cope with It" in the June-July issue of Ordained Servant. It turns out that pastors are people, too.

Further thoughts on the BSA membership requirements change

Briarwood Presbyterian Church is one of the more prominent congregations in the Presbyterian Church in America and in Birmingham, Alabama. In light of the recent changes to membership requirements made at the national level, the session there has decided to no longer charter a Boy Scout troop. The resolution should be read in full, as it carefully works through the change, its implications for the future of the Boy Scouts of America, and the burden it places on Churches which have chartered BSA organizations.

Chiasms in Proverbs 28:13-18

The righteous and the wicked appear in two overlapping chiasms in Proverbs 28:13-18. First, the two are contrasted in 28:13-14.

A: how the wicked dispose of their transgressions (28:13a)

  B: man repentant before Yahweh (28:13b)

  B': man with a right heart before Yahweh (28:14a)

A': what the wicked do with their hearts (28:14b)

This observation is then folded into the comparisons of Proverbs 28:13-18.

A: the righteous & the wicked receive just rewards from Yahweh (28:13-14)

  B: the righteous & the wicked as rulers (28:15-16)

A': the righteous & the wicked receive their due from fellow man (28:17-18)

The first of these chiasms is simply a neat and therefore memorable arrangement. If I am correct about the second, it suggests that 28:18 is not about eternal destiny, but how people are treated by their societies.

The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

Beyond question, the book subtitled an english professor’s journey into christian faith is this year’s hottest memoir in American confessionally reformed circles. Much of that has to do with the sensational nature of Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s arc: from a lesbian doctrinaire feminist university professor to the home-schooling wife of a pastor in the Reformed Presbtyerian Church of North America, noted primarily for its insistence on singing only the Psalms in worship, and that without instruments. (To be fair, there’s a great deal more going for  the RPCNA, but that’s what most people notice.) As a book, however, it lacks the power one might expect.

I am often annoyed by reviewers of Christian books who commend a work, but then devote the better part of their review to an in-depth criticism of this or that point. In the current case, I think this is a worthy read, but was unnecessarily weakened by avoidable choices. I’ll begin with those weaknesses so I can close with the book’s strengths and why I believe it should be widely read.

In the acknowledgements, Butterfield thanks her editor and describes her as “compassionate,” but she might have been better off with one a little more hostile. Writers, by and large, love their words the way a mother loves her children, and one of an editor’s most important roles is to point out when those words are ugly or ungainly and should be put out of sight. In the first couple chapters especially, I had to read and re-read sentences due to awkward construction; on at least a couple occasions, I gave up on trying to figure out that to which a particular phrase was referring.

However, the book’s greatest weakness is its middle section, and here an editor from a denominational publisher was least likely to be of help. The first two chapters describe Butterfield’s conversion process and its immediate aftermath; the third chapter provides the transition from this phase of her life to the next as she was acclimatized into the RPCNA; chapters four and five focus on her subsequent marriage and family life.

That third chapter is absolutely necessary, and not just because Butterfield tells her story in chronological sequence. In the immediate aftermath of her conversion, the then Rosaria Champagne was committed to Christ and his Word, but her affiliation with the RPCNA was more an accident of the means which the Spirit used to bring her to faith than it was a conscious or informed choice (as Butterfield notes on pp. 85-86). When she moved to the Reformed Presbyterian Vatican in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, to teach at Geneva College, her instinct for intellectual integrity demanded she reconcile that affiliation with Scripture.

For those in the broader evangelical community, presbyterianism seems an odd enough choice, but Butterfield gives little attention to the distinctives shared by all confessional presbyterians and moves directly to her denomination’s commitment to exclusive, a cappella psalmody in worship. Here, as one long-studied in the philosophy undergirding presbyterian worship, I am  sorely tempted to engage in a deep critique of her arguments. I will try to keep it brief: in sum, Butterfield offers an idiosyncratic defense of the regulative principle of worship as grounded in the Christian commitment to the Bible as the sole canon of God’s revelation. For her, and in light of John 17:17-19, this means God chooses to sanctify us only through his Word, and hence we may only sing Psalms in worship (pp. 90-93).

However, Butterfield fails to provide any reason as to why her rule of canon applies only to singing in worship, and not to its other elements such as preaching or prayer. Ironically, on p. 136 she narrates an encounter in which an OPC member (mockingly, unfortunately) raised just that point. Perhaps a less compassionate editor could have helped Butterfield either by persuading her to not argue for exclusive psalmody, or by helping her present these arguments more simply as those which won her over. When Butterfield writes as though she were a presbyterian theologian, she is not at her best.

She is much better, however, when narrating her own life and “secret thoughts.” For Christians, especially those who have grown up in the faith, Butterfield provides an invaluable window into the mindset of an outsider who feels no need or lack, but has to confront the truth of both God’s Word and authentic Christian witness. I say “authentic Christian witness” because Butterfield found herself, somewhat unwittingly, in a long-term friendship with an older presbyterian pastor and his wife. A true witness is allowing unbelievers to see and understand the lived Christian life, and Butterfield’s testimony is a challenge to Church members who hope unbelievers will be converted by professional evangelists rather than by they themselves loving their neighbors and coworkers. During this time, she was reading the Bible, and it proved to be a very effective means for revealing God’s character, the Gospel of Christ, and her own sin. We ought to be more confident in the power of God’s Word.

In the second chapter, we get to witness the unraveling of Butterfield’s pre-Christian life, which is to say her life. Here all Christians, no matter how long they have been in the faith, have much to learn. We tend to think conversion and repentance are the end of mess and complication; after all, it’s sin which brings so much trouble into our lives. However, sin is deeply rooted in the heart, and just as pulling up a large weed brings up a lot of dirt and leaves behind a big hole, so does finding and removing one’s sin tend to introduce chaos into the extant order of one’s life. Butterfield describes the result, “This was my conversion in a nutshell: I lost everything but the dog” (p. 63). We need to expect new converts to experience difficult times, and to expect all believers to be wrenched by the experience of true repentance.

These first two chapters are admirably concise. Butterfield doesn’t dwell on the racy details of lesbian experience or the drama of leaving that lifestyle behind. She details a broken engagement, but in a way which avoids anything hinting of gossip. The reader expects something of a bodice-ripper, but instead gets an admirable conversion account.

That brevity serves her less well in chapter four, where Butterfield turns to her marriage. She describes Christian marriage admirably, but disappoints her readers by not explaining why she was able to marry Kent Butterfield in contrast to the unmarriable “R” of chapters 1-2. An account of the Butterfields’ courtship would have been a helpful counterpoint to that earlier story, and its absence is a disappointment.

Chapters four and five take up a third of the book and, in a sense, overtake what preceded them. I think this is good and proper. Most parents will agree that the experience of marriage and family define one’s life rather completely, and make all that came before mere prologue, no matter how dramatic that prologue may have been. In this way, Butterfield reminds us that her earlier life may have been unusual, but today she is as fully a member of the body of Christ as any other.

The Butterfields are atypical, though, in that they are a pastor’s family and foster and adoptive family. In both these areas, they have chosen to take the risk of openness, of inviting strangers into their homes and lives. I hope readers stick with this book when the reason they picked it up has been passed because Butterfield compellingly presents the pastor’s wife-view of life and ministry. Most people perceive only their own personal involvement in the life of a congregation, and I hope the larger overview Butterfield gives here helps her readers better understand how they each can better serve in his or her own Church. She also describes, better than I have seen anywhere else, the privileges and griefs of being a Christian who fosters and adopts through social services. In my opinion, many Christians fear the risks and so avoid this area of service by trafficking in scare stories. Butterfield’s insider experience refutes those rumors and beautifully portrays the rewards which come only as a result of risking (and experiencing) grief and loss.

Given mankind’s hard-heartedness, all conversions are unlikely. Still, Rosaria Butterfield’s experiences are certainly unusual. For all their particularity, though, they provide a window into the universal experience of a Christian faith lived in utter commmitment to God’s promises in Christ. Because of that, I hope many will take, read, learn, and live accordingly.

Why I Am Not “Reformed”

Please note the quotation marks. By “reformed,” I do not herein refer to the Continental Reformed tradition of protestantism, marked by confessional adherence to the Three Forms of Unity (that is, the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dordt). I have a few minor disagreements with the brethren (primarily having to do with the nature of the Church beyond the local congregation and a frank belief the Westminster Standards are an improvement upon the Three Forms of Unity), but I sincerely believe we presbyterians have much to learn from their faith and practice and think I could cheerfully serve within one of their communions.

No, by “reformed” I have in mind the way that term has come to be used on the vast wide webernet. Out there, “reformed” seems to be no more than belief in a set of doctrinal propositions somewhat smaller than those contained in the Westminster Standards, chiefly:
•God is sovereign, which probably implies predestination; and
•the five points of Calvinism.

I am not “reformed” in this sense because a more proper way to label belief in these propositions is “barely literate.” That is, if you have read your Bible and don’t believe these things, you need to go back and read it again. And again. And for however long it takes to shake off your unconscionable objections to the obvious meaning of the text and realize why it is these propositions, until the very recent past, were universally considered essential to Christian faith.

Moreover, I am not “reformed” because the Christian life is not assent to a set of propositions. Granted, one cannot be a Christian without assent to certain propositions. However, “the Christian life” implies a series of actions and choices. Those choices ought, of course, to be informed by belief, and a moment of reflection will make evident the inadequacy of the limited number of beliefs held to by the “reformed” to guide and govern all one’s actions. Something has to fill in the rest of one’s life, and as “the rest” in this instance covers nearly all of one’s life, that something will tend to predominate.

In other words, “reformed Baptists” are distinguishable from “Baptists” only by the very occasional sermon. “Reformed evangelicals” are distinguishable from “evangelicals” by the fact the sermon might be based on a text of Scripture. But their Churches’ worship and government will be very much like the mainstream of their Baptist or evangelical tradition, and so their people will likewise live very similarly to their non-“reformed” brethren.

Hence, I am not “reformed,” but presbyterian. Presbyterianism is marked not only by a much more comprehensive set of doctrines, but also by a firm belief that God requires us to govern our Church life and worship according to definite Biblical principles. Presbyterianism also commends to its people a historic set of practices (what John Williamson Nevin called “the catechism”) by which to work out Biblical beliefs in one’s life and pass them on to one’s children. By Biblical conviction and from lived experience, I believe presbyterianism is how one ought to live the Christian life. From my observation, those who call themselves “reformed” are a long way away from presbyterianism.

I am not “reformed,” but I am a presbyterian.

And, on a redundant note, a curmudgeonly one.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Cormac McCarthy

As I write, I am on what I’ve called a “writing sabbatical,” largely because I’ve gone off the grid for a few days so I can tackle several long-delayed writing projects (brief essays, nothing too impressive) without interruption. (I here note the profound strangeness of completing a sentence and having no e-mail to read or phone call to answer. I feel like Henry David Thoreau, only mildly less self-admiring.)

However, I’m also reading, which is something I rarely do anymore. Since a massive percentage of my waking hours is spent in the act of reading, that last sentence might easily be challenged; but when I think of “reading,” I think of hours of sustained attention to a text without concern for its usefulness in my work. My typical workload, plus being in a marriage and a family, doesn’t permit that. So yesterday I finally got to read the bulk of the hottest memoir in American confessionally reformed circles: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield (which, incidentally, is a name no one would believe were it assigned to the heroine of a romance novel). But that’s not the book I want to talk about.

The final third of Butterfield’s memoir is chiefly taken up with her current life as the mother of a foster and adoptive family. This, inevitably, led me to consider my own foster and adoptive family, which equally inevitably leads me back to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

I can no more quantify my intellectual and psychic debt to McCarthy than I can to Shakespeare, and I am equally embarrassed by how relatively unfamiliar I am with the entire body of work of both. (Here I feel even more acutely the impoverishment incurred by not giving sustained attention.) I read The Road only once, but it has never left me. I recently ran across a review of it in an old copy of First Things, and the reviewer faulted it rather sharply. As I recall, this was largely because McCarthy failed the purpose of the dystopian genre, which is to explore the nature and meaning of society and civilization.

I think this is a profound misreading of The Road. McCarthy didn’t write a dystopian novel. Rather, he wrote a book about fatherhood and used the genre of the dystopian novel because it allowed him to strip away everything else. Along those lines, this is why he had the mother commit suicide before the book’s opening: not because he’s a misogynist who thinks women are incapable of parenting through crisis, but because he was writing about a father, not parents. (A note to skeptics of that last sentence: as someone married to a mother who spends a great deal of time thinking through that role, I can assure you that “parenting” is a generic category quite distinct from those of “mothering” and “fathering.”)

SPOILER ALERT: I will now discuss details of The Road’s plot. For the record, this is the most mind-numbingly terrifying book I have ever read (which is why I’ve only read it once and don’t own a copy), so I don’t recommend anyone else ever read it. In that light, perhaps revealing the plot won’t much matter. At any rate, you’ve been warned (twice in just this paragraph, actually).

As the title indicates, The Road’s basic plot is the father’s plan to travel across a dystopian nightmare, left after an unnamed and barely described apocalypse, to the ocean. It’s not much of a plan because the father doesn’t know what he and his young son will find when, if ever, they get there. Right away, McCarthy shows the fragility and futility of the father’s attempt to provide for his son’s future. We’re told he carries a gun with two bullets, one for the father and one for the boy in case the unspeakable threatens. In the opening pages of the novel, the father has to use one of his bullets to shoot a man who might kill his son, throwing off his entire calculus for their journey.

With equal authorial boldness, McCarthy brings his protagonists to the end of the road, to the ocean where they find only more ruin and human despair. The father’s best efforts leave him with nothing for his young boy, and then illness sets in. He leaves his son with the best instructions he can on how to survive, but dies with no real hope for the boy’s future in a nightmarishly hostile world.

Then McCarthy delivers what may appear to be an arbitrary deus ex machina, in which a small band of adults and children emerge. They tell the boy they’ve been aware of him and his father for some time, but didn’t approach because they judged the father too dangerous; his protective zeal, ironically, made him a threat even to those who might sincerely befriend him. The boy is taken in, and the most despair-ridden book I’ve ever read ends with a genuine ray of hope.

Of course, careful readers of Cormac McCarthy’s work know nothing with him is ever arbitrary. Instead, the entire book is carefully crafted to commend the path of true fatherhood. A father, to be worthy of the title, must be absolutely committed to his children. While he will have to die for them, he must go even further: he has to kill for them if the circumstances demand it. He does all he can to provide for their welfare and their future, but both of those are ultimately out of his control: though a father, he is, ultimately, only a man. In the end, however, his children are not as dependent on him as he thinks; they each are part of a much larger world, and that world has a place for them, a place which even their father is unable to imagine.

For a post-apocalyptic novel, The Road is remarkably devoid of religious symbolism (those who write of the apocalypse have a hard time avoiding the Biblical one). From what I can tell from his other works, Cormac McCarthy leans toward nihilism, or at least a rather dark existentialism. Nonetheless, he is only a Westerner by way of the Christ-haunted South, and The Road admonishes me as a Christian father. McCarthy is right: I must imitate Christ by dying for my children, but I am not their Savior. They have a greater Father, and I need to entrust them to him and teach them to forsake me.

In this, I’m not sure Cormac McCarthy taught me anything new, but he did help me realize that which any reader of Scripture should already know. That’s the thing about giving hours of sustained attention to a text without concern for its usefulness: that text just might answer the questions you didn’t realize you were asking.