Jesus Made in America Redux

A few months ago I blogged enthusiatically about Stephen Nichols' book, Jesus: Made in America. Here is a video interview of Steve about that book, with Derek Thomas. Steve will be our speaker at our 2009 "Greater Reading Gathering of Reformed Evangelicals" (a meeting which, incidentally, needs a new name; I am open to suggestions!).

Christ or a Cause

Like you, I am not always enthusiastic about what appears in the New Horizons. But when you get the August issue, do check out the article on pp. 8-9 titled, A Person--Not a Cause. If you think about what Brian Wingard says there it will help to put many things into perspective--and keep us from too closely identifying Christ with a cause that may, no matter how worthy it is, threaten to steal the limelight from him as Redeemer and Lord. Click here to read the article.

Best of the Puritans

In Steve Nichol's book (see previous post) he takes the Puritans as his benchmark. Who were the Puritans? Let me interject here something from another book, Worldly Saints by Leland Ryken (father of Phil Ryken, pastor at Tenth Pres in Philly). In the preface, J.I. Packer describes the Puritans as follows (p. xi-xii):
"As their Christianity was all-embracing, so their living was all of a piece. Nowadays we would call this lifestyle wholistic: all awareness, activity, and enjoyment, all 'use of the creatures' and development of personal powers and creativity, were integrated in the single purpose of honoring God by appreciating all his gifts and making everything 'holiness to the Lord.' There was for them no disjunction between the sacred and the secular; all creation, so far as they were concerned, was sacred, and all activities, of whatever kind, must be sanctified, that it, done to the glory of God. So, in their heavenly-minded ardor the Puritans became men and women of order, matter-of-fact and down-to-earth, prayerful, purposeful, practical. Seeing life whole, they integrated contemplation with action, worship with work, labor with rest, love of God with love of neighbor and of self, personal with social identity, and the wide spectrum of relational responsibilities with each other, in a throughly conscientious and thought-out way." (Of course Packer is speaking here of the ideal; whether every Puritan lived up to this ideal is, no doubt, another question.)
"Knowing themselves to be creatures of thought, affection [emotion], and will, and knowing that God's way to the human heart (will) is via the head (the mind), the Puritans practised meditation, discursive and and systematic, on the whole range of biblical truth as they saw it applying to themselves. Puritan meditation on Scripture was modeled on the Puritan sermon; in meditation the Puritan would seek to search and challenge his heart, to stir his affections [emotions] to hate sin and love righteousness, and to encourage himself with God's promises, just as the Puritan preachers would do from the pulpit. This rational, resolute, passionate piety was conscious without becoming obsessive, law-oriented without lapsing into legalism, and expressive of Christian liberty without shameful lurches into license...."

Jesus-Made in America

While on vacation, I have deeply enjoyed--and been challenged by--Steve Nichols' book, Jesus Made in America. The subtitle is, "A Cultural History from the Puritans to The Passion of the Christ." (Steve Nichols is now Research Professor of Christianity and Culture at Lancaster Bible College; ten years ago he was my boss at the Westminster Campus Bookstore, while he was working on his Ph.D. and I on my M. Div.). This is a sometimes disconcerting, but excellent book.
For example, on Jesus as he was understood during the revolutionary war era Nichols writes: "The Jesus of America's founders compares to Jesus throughout the rest of America's history like a prelude to a symphony: we hear in brief the melodies and motifs to come. Jesus is a fine purveyor of morality and virtue. He is humble and meek, industrious and honest. The Gospels are a fine companion for life, especially for the young who are making their way in the world. Both Jesus and the Gospels are indispensable to both public welfare and private devotion and piety. Jesus is needed in life, to be sure, but he is also needed at death, where he welcomes departed aints into heaven's bosom. But he is less than divine. He is amiable and loving, but not judge. All of these motifs reverberate throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century treatments of Jesus, all too often drowning out the still, small voices of the Puritans."
Here, indeed, is a recurring theme in Nichols' book: "American evangelicals do indeed like Jesus; we just don't always like him straight."
Well, I'm still on vacation, and must be off vacationing. More to follow, from other periods in American history.