Joel Osteen will be thrilled, I’m sure, to know that he’s made someone a little bit happier today (since I’ve never heard him say anything that scratched much deeper than wanting people to be a little bit happier today).
You see, Joel Osteen doesn’t speak in tongues. OK, so I don’t know what he does in private, but if you tune in to his multimedia self, although you’ll get a lot of gibberish, none of it will be of the glossolalic variety. Osteen comes from a charismatic background. He leads a church with a charismatic background. They’ve put tongues on the back burner. And Osteen is not doing this for theological reasons (duh). He’s putting tongues on the back burner because the consumers to whom he is marketing have done so, he thinks.
The back burner. I think that’s where tongues-speaking is going. Quickly. The people I encounter who have burning questions and great curiosity about tongues-speaking and sign-gifts are all my age or older. From my experience, that’s not something that younger Christians value very highly. In fact, I sometimes hear Pentecostals and charismatics pining away for “the good old days,” remarking about how the young people in their own churches aren’t sufficiently interested in the charismata. They tend more to value expressiveness in worship in conjunction with songs written in actual language and comprehended by them. Even within those songs, we’re witnessing a move back to hymns (arranged differently)—a trend toward content and substance. That’s a trend (substantive content) that runs pretty much diametrically against glossolalia, which is devoid of substantive content that any of us are able to discern.
I think that the actual priority younger Southern Baptists are pursuing is not so much an embrace of charismania as a desire to be seen as cosmopolitan and tolerant. Jerry Rankin’s generation would (some of them) find it important actually to experiment with glossolalia; David Platt’s would just find it important to be able to tell people that one isn’t one of those nasty legalistic fundamentalists.
I am not, however, without worries. Osteen makes me worry less, but he doesn’t obliterate my worries altogether. Although I believe that Charles Fox Parham’s peculiar contribution to recent Christianity is waning in America, I’m not sure that the same is true across the nations where we are sending missionaries. My concern has always been less about what a missionary might be doing in private and more about what a missionary might be encouraging in his or her work among young churches and immature believers.
It is a fact, documented with angst even by some leaders in American charismatic circles, that the spread of pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa has been part-and-parcel with the spread of the prosperity gospel in Latin America and Africa. This tongues-speaking, miracle-purporting, blessing-seeking faith is nearly as amenable to syncretism with animistic religions as is Roman Catholicism. This is not a victim-less theology; it produces weak, pseudo-churches that are a thin veneer over the animism that has been present in these tribes for centuries. Animism is, after all, at its heart, a form of prosperity religion. It adapts pretty well to some of the errors in portions of Pentecostalism. What amounts to small errors here often swells into serious theological deformities in environments of first-generation Christianity.
We do not need missionaries to be cosmopolitan about THAT. We do not need missionaries to be tolerant of THAT. We need missionaries who are on a mission to combat and correct such things, for being on that mission is exactly the same thing as being on a mission to strengthen churches and advance the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
My hope is that very few actual practitioners of glossolalia will seek IMB appointment, which probably surprises nobody and secures the agreement of very few. It’s not that I want the number of missionaries to decline; it’s just that I want the practice of modern glossolalia to decline. And I hope that our cosmopolitan, tolerant young appointees, once they get a close look at the prosperity churches abroad, will experience sufficient revulsion toward the phenomenon to harden their opposition against it and to influence the leadership that they give to churches overseas.
You know, upon reading this afresh, the tone is harsher than I wanted it to be. I was looking for jovial, but I think I came up with sarcastic. Sorry about that. I may revise it.
OK. I’ve edited it now. If you think this version is bad, you should’ve seen my FIRST draft! 🙂
Hey, we get to argue about THIS again! Yay! In all seriousness, I share your concerns about the prosperity gospel in the Global South. However, I would say that our entire history has been eaten up with the prosperity gospel here among Southern Baptists in America. We defended slavery and racism and segregation, which are versions of the prosperity gospel. Then, we bought into individualism and consumerism and seeker churches and suburban mega churches after all our people moved to the suburbs with white flight and we opened private schools and academies and did it for our families so we… Read more »
“I think we will do okay.”
And that’s the basic message of my post, too. Even though I come at this with different theological convictions than you do, I think we’ll wind up being less vulnerable as a result of this policy today than we might’ve been with it at some times in the past.
As to the indictment of the prosperity gospel in non-charismatic groups, we certainly don’t disagree there.
Yeah, my comment came off harsher than I meant for it to as well. When I type in my phone, that happens. I love Southern Baptists and agree with our theology more than any other group. However, I find that we struggle with prosperity gospels as well, and they also hinder our mission and discipleship in serious ways. They just take different forms.
Agreed.
But I DO think that the particular kind of prosperity gospel that threatens churches in these missionary contexts is more the “manipulate a spirit” type of prosperity gospel than the “protestant work ethic” type of prosperity gospel. I can say that even while agreeing that both are varieties of making your own accumulation of wealth what you really worship.
Oh, definitely. We have been going to Haiti a lot and encountering voodoo and it is similar to the Hinduism in North India. I would say that the prosperity gospel takes the form of the host culture and then seeks to subvert Christianity to it. This is the thesis of the 3rd book, if I ever write it, which will compare how the prosperity gospel takes many different forms around the world. It goes back to the first temptation in Eden and the way the Devil tempted Jesus in the desert. But yeah, the forms are different. We know that… Read more »
“It is impossible to be a Southern Baptist and a charismatic at the same time in the same way that it is impossible to be an Arminian and a Southern Baptist.” Well, actually, due to the loose nature of SBC affiliation, and the fact that NO church has to adopt or even agree with the BFM to be a full member of the SBC, It is undeniable that there are MANY arminian Southern Baptist members…and likely that there are a few arminian southern Baptist Churches. I know my church has arminians (5 point ones). They are members of our church.… Read more »
Exactly true.
Andy, I don’t know how you define it, but an Ariminian believes that salvation can be lost. Southern Baptists don’t believe that. Charismatics believe in a Second Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Southern Baptists don’t believe that. That is why I say you cannot be Arminian and Charismatic and be Southern Baptist at the same time. Believing in the continuation of the gifts of the Spirit, including PPL, does not make one charismatic.
He’s making the point that ours is not a confessional fellowship of churches, and that many of our churches are not confessional fellowships of Christians.
I have full-fledged Arminians in my church. We don’t kick people out for rejecting eternal security; we simply try to disciple them until they know better. 🙂
“…an Ariminian believes that salvation can be lost.”
“[Jacob Arminius] adamantly insisted he did not deny Eternal Security,” writes Roger Olson, Arminian scholar.
Dr. Olson would be thrilled that you have injected that thought here, Mark. But I can also make a decent case that Calvin did not affirm limited atonement.
It is a common phenomenon in history, is it not, that the “-ism” goes at least a wee bit beyond where the founder was willing to go?
Bart, I offered one quote, but he says much more, including that Arminian Baptists hold to eternal security. And that there is not just one view in Arminianism. The Society of Evangelical Arminians have a post titled, “Survey: Are You an Arminian and Don’t Even Know It?” in which they explain an Arminian may hold to eternal security. As you probably know article 5 of the Remonstrance left the question on eternal security open stating it “must be more particularly determined out of the Holy Scripture, before we ourselves can teach it with the full persuasion of our mind.” To… Read more »
🙂
Yes, The Sbc Confession says salvation cannot be lost, and yet many southern Baptists believe it can. That belief does not impede their membership most sbc churches, and does not even prevent their participation as messengers. All it does is prevent them being an sbc missionary or employee.
“Many southern Baptists believe salvation can be lost”???
Now I’ve only been a Southern Baptist pastor for 18 years, but I’ve never meet a Southern Baptist church member who believed in falling from grace.
But then again most of the Southern Baptists around here believe alien immersions should be rejected. (As did the vast majority of all Southern Baptists just a generation or two ago.)
If this was a the situation in the church I pastored then I would preach on eternal security on Sunday morning and teach on it more deeply on either Sunday or Wednesday night.
Well, Ben, we have these United Methodists fleeing the rank liberalism of their former denomination. We immerse them and then we set to work discipling them. But discipleship takes time, doesn’t it?
Some of the strictest Southern Baptist pastors and church members I knew were raised Methodist, so it is quite possible. The problem is the average Southern Baptist pastor has forgotten the last part of the Great Commission – “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you”
I know one local SBC pastor who believes salvation may be forfeited, but not lost – as in lost due to sin. He believes that one may chose to stop believing by free-will just as they believed by the same power.
Ben, 1. I am not in the south, so perhaps that is a difference. I know in my church of 200, at least 10-20 would believe in the possibility of apostasy…over 45k sbc churchs, that number must be in the thousands. I preached on it the last time I preached, and while some members thanked me for enlightening them on a topic they had some confusion about…our recent Nazarene transfer said, “That’s interesting,” That man is very godly, and will likely be a deacon sometime in the next few years, with no objection from me or any of our pastors.… Read more »
I should add that I know this about my church because we had a sunday school series on soteriology within the first year we were there, and had some good discussions about this issue from both sides…our young/middle aged adult class seemed about split 50/50 on the issue.
Andy,
I am glad to hear you all are discussing the issue in your church. I think this will bear fruit. Still, in the very least, I would not be in favor of ordaining a man as a deacon in a Southern Baptist Church who did not believe in eternal security.
Alan
You make some very valid points. Part of the problem is that we throw around terms too loosely. I am not an Arminian, Calvinist, Charismatic, or Traditionalist in the way we throw these terms around. Yet there are parts of the theology of each I accept. We must be more precise it seems to me
Alan, Good word. Let me add that something of the prosperity gospel is behind the angst concerning the moral decline in the West that has become ever more apparent. The common sentiment that I see that “we” have turned out backs on God and he is judging us now. Therefore, “we” need to turn back to God so that he will bless us like he used to. The “we” needs qualification – it refers to Christians an non-Christians alike. It refers to Christians in that the sense is that the Church isn’t doing what the Church is supposed to do.… Read more »
I could well be wrong on this, as there is anecdotal evidence for all types of explanations. But my suspicion is that a hard-line cessationist stance on the mission field in many places does more to move national believers toward the prosperity gospel than does a balanced continuationist stance. Many people in other cultures, who are well acquainted with the spirit world, and open to supernatural approaches to religion in general, when forced to choose between what they perceive to be a Western, intellectual, Enlightenment-influenced approach to Christianity and one that takes the spirit world and supernatural experiences as genuine,… Read more »
I think I could possibly agree with that, if I get to define what you mean by it. 🙂 Just as the wrong kind of rigidity in the tenacious advocacy of Christianity may produce a particular kind of atheist (even if Christianity is actually right and atheism is actually wrong), I find it entirely plausible that the wrong kind of “hard-line cessationist stance” might push people toward prosperity gospels. I think the sort of semi-cessationism represented by the IMB policies did not necessarily limit the missionary force to only what I would regard as those with a hard-line cessationist stance.… Read more »
Yeah. I’m trying to trip you up.
“Enlightenment-influenced approach to Christianity”
The Reformers (Martin Luther & John Calvin) were cessationists, and they lived two centuries BEFORE the enlightenment. I am not that convinced of cessationism myself, but I would never say that it is “Enlightenment-influenced.”
Indisputable. Good word.
I would not say that it is indisputable. John Knox was not a cessationist. There were most definitely different views present at the same time in the 1500s among the Reformers just as there are now.
And, there is no doubt that an anti-supernatural bias was firmly introduced during the Enlightenment.
It is indisputable that cessationism predates the Enlightenment. Yes, one can argue that the Enlightenment and cessationism were highly compatible. One cannot, however, assert the Enlightenment as the cause of cessationism.
Most cessationists are motivated by a commitment to THE SUFFICIENCY OF SCRIPTURE, not by an anti-supernatural bias. I am not necessarily convinced of cessationism myself, but I have taken the time to read and think through the careful exegetical arguments of men like Richard Gaffin, Sinclair Ferguson, and Thomas Schreiner. Cessationists deserve to be taken seriously on the basis of what they actually believe rather than being flippantly dismissed on the basis of what they do not believe.
Just to be contrary, I would say that they are motivated by ONE (in my opinion unbibilical) version of the sufficiency of scripture.
I refuse to allow cessationists to define that debate. It is the sufficient scriptures that demand that I deny cessationism and accept the current activity of the Spirit in a way they deny.
So, I will not allow the cessation to co-opt that phrase as if the denial of cessationism is the denial of the sufficiency of Scripture.
Dave
I think I have the same issue here that I posted earlier, namely “how do you define ‘cessationist'”?
I have heard it refer to tongues only and even to gifts in general and at times to most any activity of the Spirit. The point is to deny cessationists to define the argument would need definition.
However, this plays out the sufficiency of scripture is axiomatic.
David First I must say that I would bow to your expertise in this area. Secondly. I generally agree with the spirit and tone of your comment. Thirdly, I should take a little more time to digest what you said. At first blush I think that while adapting to culture is important obviously, there is Scriptural accountability to be considered. Would not the issue be what the scripture teaches, not how well it bodes with the culture? Again, you have more knowledge in this area that I. To paraphase Dr. Bart I think we would be in agreement if we… Read more »
You know, I’ve been thinking about Dave, David, Alan, Dwight, me, and all the gang from back in the day. Would ANY of us on ANY side of this issue agree with the third paragraph of this article…the way it describes the history of glossolalia?
http://www.religionnews.com/2015/05/14/southern-baptists-open-ranks-missionaries-speak-tongues/
I think they’ve managed to find a “historical” summary so wrong that nobody thinks it’s right! 🙂
I think I would agree with you there, Bart. They brought in multiple perspectives and lumped them into on. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the one who speaks/prays in a tongue has control over it, so don’t do it AT people – speak intelligible words TO people.
That picture is funny too.
I’ve commented on the article and offered to buy an expensive lunch for whoever chose that photo to go with the article. 🙂
That was the most sorry excuse for “news” I’ve seen in a while. RNS cannot be taken seriously at all with reporting like that.