Mohler, Jr., R. Albert. Atheism Remix. Wheaton, Il: Crossway, 2008. 

“Albert Mohler is a steady guide, unremittingly clear-headed.”  This John Piper quote dawns the cover of many of Dr. Mohler’s books on the social landscape that lies before the contemporary Christian.  This Piper quote provides a concise description of Atheism Remix published in 2008 by Crossway.  Not only is this book “clear-headed”, but is even-handed in its approach to the “New Atheism” that is sweeping across America and Western Europe.  Atheism Remix is a treatment of the work of “The Four Horsemen of the New Atheist Apocalypse,” (39) as Mohler calls them, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens.  Atheism is not new, as Mohler points out (17), but these new atheist are, “evangelistic in intent and ambitious in hope.  They see atheism as the only plausible worldview for our times, and they see belief in God as downright dangerous –an artifact of the past that we can no longer afford to tolerate, much less encourage.” (12) 

Mohler first discusses the New Atheism in relationship to it End-Game of Secularism.  He points out that it was, “only after the Enlightenment that atheism became a real intellectual force.” (18)  It would progress more rapidly through the lives of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and Sigmund Freud.  The writings and influence of these men would lead to the rise of the, “explicitly atheistic state,” (27) one void of religious influence where, “Marx’s assumption that religion is ‘the opiate of the masses’” (27) had to be fully embraced and, “that opiate must be taken from the people and replaced with the vision of the new Communist man.” (27)  Mohler codifies Max Weber’s arguments when he concludes that the end goal of both the contemporary secularist and the New Atheist is that, “eventually modernity would lead to society’s disenchantment with the enchanted world, by which he meant a world in which God is necessary and meaningful, and its entrance into a disenchanted (or secular) world.” (29)  This is clearly the end-game of the New Atheist. 

Mohler then moves on to discuss the assault that this New Atheism is having on theism.  In this chapter he gives background history on each of the “Four Horsemen,” shows their credentials to be in this debate, and briefly describes their contributions to the atheist/theist debate.  One of the most insightful quotes of the entire book comes from this chapter and is a stern warning to those who lead Christ’s churches.  In reflecting on the early religious training of both Dawkins and Hitches, Mohler writes, “There is something to be learned here.  A tepid introduction to Christianity turns out to be a poor preparation for life, and an even poorer preparation for hearing the gospel.” (53)  Dr. Mohler then spends the rest of the chapter discussing eight characteristics that set the New Atheism “apart from older forms of atheism and that frame its challenge to Christian belief.” (54)

Carl F. H. Henry said, “the world is looking for an evangelical demonstration of Christianity, not merely an intellectual defense.” (65)  In the third chapter of Atheism Remix, Al Mohler takes the reader through a multitude of defenses that should be prevalent in the arsenal of the contemporary Christian.  Much of this chapter is dedicated to the responses of Alister McGrath and Alvin Plantinga to the work of the New Atheists.  He does point out, however, that, “the Achilles heel of the critiques offered by McGrath and Plantinga might be their own acceptance of the larger project of evolution” (84) and as such, “the evangelical Christian…must remember that the burden of our concern is not merely to refute atheism or to argue for the intellectual credibility of theism in any generic or minimal form.  Instead, our task is to present, to teach, to explain and to defend Christian theism.” (84; emphasis his)

Finally Mohler discusses the Future of Christianity and its relationship with the New Atheism.  He says, “Christians must summon the courage to respond to this challenge with the full measure of conviction and with a bold assertion of biblical theism.” (90)  That is not, however, how many of those who occupy the liberal side of the theological spectrum deem this debate.  Mohler interacts with several of those liberal theologians and their writings in this final chapter.  Tina Beattie, for example, “accuses Hitchens and Dawkins of making the same mistake made by fundamentalists–reading the Bible as if it is true.” (93)  Mohler shows that clearly this is not the answer.  In his book The Disappearance of God, Mohler discusses Gerd Lüdemann, a theologian who after spending his life denying, “the resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth, and eventually the totality of the gospel,” (Disapperance, 108) finally came to say that, “a Christian is someone who prays to Christ and believes in what is promised by Christian doctrine.  So I asked myself” ‘Do I pray to Jesus, do I pray to the God of the Bible?’ And I don’t do that.  Quite the reverse.” (Disapperance, 110)  Lüdemann now goes after liberal theologians who he says, “should give up their claim on Christianity for the sake of honesty.” (Disapperance, 111)   This is the point Mohler returns to time and time again in this last chapter of Atheism Remix.  He concludes with this sobering statement:  “The New Atheists are certainly right about one very important thing–it’s atheism or biblical theism.  There is nothing in between.” (108)

Atheism Remix is an important read for pastors because the books being distributed by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens are front and center on bookshelves across our country.  Mohler points out their books have spent significant time on the New York Times Best Seller List (43). As pastors, we are going to increasingly face this tidal wave of unbelief.  1 Peter 3:15 ESV tells us to, “always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”  Atheism Remix is a good place to begin preparing that defense.  The enemy we face is always ready.  The New Atheists are prepared to give a defense for their lack of hope.  Al Mohler has laid out for us their battle plans and in so doing leaves us no excuse to have our defenses down.

Missional is a big catch-word in church growth circles these days, and in the SBC.  In conversation with some friends recently, I suggested that maybe the divide between many churches was ideological in part and could be defined along a missional line, ie. missional verses non-missional churches.  The problem, as pointed out in that conversation, is that no church will admit to being non-missional, and most (if not all) Baptist churches would claim defiantly that they are missional.  Yet, the nature of our own Southern Baptist Convention screams otherwise.  As a denomination in decline, it is obvious that the majority of our churches are not reaching people for the gospel, and yet, we continue to claim to be missional.  What is needed is a clear definition of what it means to be missional.  Mark Driscoll has said “Without a clear definition of what a missional church community is and does, tragically, community will become the mission of the church” (Mark Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. p. 32).

I think Driscoll is correct, so what does it mean to be truly missional, and can the rifts in our denomination (and even in evangelicalism) really be defined along these lines?  If so, can we right the ship of the SBC and of evangelicalism by appealing to all churches to refocus around the missional claims of the gospel?  Jurgen Moltmann is helpful here:

It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church (Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, London: SCM Press, 1977, 64).

(more…)

April 28th, 2010 |

Tags: GCR, Missional, SBC

In 1972 Henlee H. Barnette was a professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Barnette was also an avid opponent of biblical inerrancy and, it appears, of the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. However, in that year, Barnette released, The Church and The Ecological Crisis, as, by his own admission, “an attempt to summarize the salient factors in the eco-crisis in the light of the biblical understanding of man and nature.”

To be sure, not all that Barnette has to say is bad. For instance, his emphasis on pollution control and holistic gospel preaching is as timely today as it was when he first gave these lessons in the Norton Lectures at Southern Seminary, however, I found this book very telling of the reasons why a conservative resurgence was necessary in the SBC during the last quarter of the Twentieth Century.

In Barnette, we find, not a man dedicated first and foremost to biblical literacy and inerrancy and governed by the book, but a man governed by a liberal worldview that shaped his theology. Thus, seeing the “eco-crisis” that was faced in 1972 (and presumably today) Barnette advocates for population control through organizations such as Planned Parenthood. Arguing that we have a responsibility to love all creatures and nature, Barnette even goes so far as to suggest that “Christian agape” to fellow humans can be shown by allowing and potentially even enforcing abortion as a form of population control.

In any event, abortion is a sure method of controlling population growth. In Japan, for example, where birth control has been a national policy since 1949, there were 20 million legal abortions up to 1964. During this time the birthrate dropped from 34.3 in 1949 to 16.5. About 70 percent of the reduction is attributed to legalized abortions.

The liberal worldview and mindset of Barnette leads him to a documentary hypothesis view of the Old Testament and even to a belief echoed in Carl Sagan that nature is itself a sort of living being with a type of personality (Barnette loosely advocates panpsychism, which views the universe as a living organism).

Later in life, Barnette would be quoted in his passionate rejection of inerrancy,

Almost Every decade for the last 30 years, I have written an article on inerrancy as a biblical heresy…Southern Baptist fundamentalist inerrantists claim the Bible as inerrant as to text, history, science, and cosmology…We must discover the Word in the words of the Bible. To make the Bible perfect and to give our ultimate loyalty to it is to worship a thing adnd not a person, Jesus Christ. This is called bibliolatry, the worship of a book (Sutton, The Baptist Reformation, 419).

Barnette was not all wrong (though I believe history has proven that he is not all right either) on the environment and on the responsibility of Christians to be engaged in a holistic approach to the gospel. I believe that Southern Baptists would have done well to have been involved in social issues long ago. At the same time, the criticisim that SBC adherants have not been involved in social issues is not totally true either. It is just the case that issues like abortion, euthanasia, and disaster relief, which have always elicited great response from the Southern Baptist community are not “cool enough” to be considered social involvement anymore. Either way, Southern Baptists should have heard Barnette’s push toward holistic evangelism, however, it was Barnette’s retreat from orthodox and historical views of God’s word that caused his voice to fall on deaf ears for the marjority of Southern Baptists.

Instead of Barnette’s liberal approach that devalues the Word of God, evangelical Christians must embrace a holistic gospel that lifts high God’s word and engages in social activism primarily for his glory. My hope and prayer is that the Conservative Resurgence laid the groundwork for a rich theology of this type and that the GCR opens the door for this to be lived out as gospel driven change for our denomination and our world.

With so much talk about who Southern Baptists really are historically and what theological stream we fall into (or are birthed from), I am inclined to remind us all that we are neither Calvinist nor Arminian nor even are we all somewhere in between. Emir Caner’s recent essay that can be found in the Christian Index on Daniel Marshall and Kiokee Baptist Church (which I have visited) traces the Sandy Creek tradition from North Carolina into Georgia and essentially makes the argument that from the beginning, Southern Baptists have been descendants of Anabaptists and have been a theological hybrid who’s only ardent theological perspective was the perseverance of the believer.

Though well written and done so specifically for the Georgia Baptist Convention, all (including Caner I have no doubt) know and agree that Southern Baptists are and have been formed not only from the Sandy Creek tradition, but from the Charleston tradition as well.  The fact remains that we as Southern Baptists are an eclectic blend of staunchly reformed stiffs and free wheeling almost Arminians.  We cannot be packaged into a neat theological box, but we must find the things upon which we can agree, and that must be evangelical faith.

To be Southern Baptist is to be more than our Theological perspectives, but it must never be less. Certainly, there is room in our tradition for varying theological convictions, but must there continue to be room for theological wars. There is room for Baptist churches who extend an alter call and there are multitudes of people who have been saved in this kind of tradition, but there is also room for churches who have no alter call. After all, tons of people have come to know Christ without an alter call as well.

Timothy George’s presentation from the Union University Baptist Identity Conference in 2007 has been referenced on this site before and I will point to it again as a great place to begin a conversation for reconciliation in SBC circles.

Further, I wonder what could be accomplished if we of different theological stripes spoke to one another rather than about one another or if we could focus on our agreements rather than our differences.

Spurgeon is always a safe model to look to. He was an ardent evangelist, a strict biblicist, an advocate for church autonomy, a scholar, and (gasp) a Calvinist. Spurgeon didn’t practice an alter call, he prepared his sermons on Saturday nights (and didn’t preach through books of the Bible), he smoked cigars, and impacted the world with the gospel. Spurgeon was the Prince of Preachers, yet his reformed theology did not some how make him less evangelical, nor did it cause him to separate from godly preachers who held to different theological convictions–he even opened his pulpit to D.L. Moody and had a great friendship with the fiery evangelist.

Could Spurgeon have been a Southern Baptist? I hope so, but I’m not sure he would be welcomed in many circles–Small church pastors would be weary b/c the Tabernacle is too big, traditionalists would be offended because he is too animated, academics would call him crass, non-Calvinists would have called him unevangelical, and many Calvinists would question his passionate pleading to lost sinners (we better not even speak of the cigars). Seriously folks, if Spurgeon wouldn’t fit in, are we really where we ought to be?

May we come together for the sake of the gospel and in so doing let us not be arrogant about what the gospel is (see Bill Streger’s blog, Gospel-Centered Legalism). The gospel is a historical fact and event that we can all agree upon. Jesus lived a perfect sinless life, was killed by evil sinful men and suffered that death for our sin, was buried in a borrowed tomb, rose on the third day, and ascended to the right hand of the Father where he sits as our advocate today. The world is lost and dying and the SBC is not making an impact. Let’s wake up and rally around the gospel for the sake of the lost world around us. Spurgeon did, and the world is better for it.

Is your church healthy? Most of you who will read this have heard the numbers time and time again. Eighty percent of SBC (and other evangelical denominations) churches are either plateaued or declining. My concern is that we’ve heard that number so many times that we really don’t allow it to sink in.  Recently, I attended a state-level meeting in South Carolina where we discussed the decline of the church and the need for church planting in our state.

There, we began to break the percentages and statistics into real numbers. In SC, we have about 2100 SBC churches (which makes up 2/3 of all evangelical churches in our state).  Of those, 1680 are either plateaued or declining and 634 churches baptized no one last year. That number is depressing, but even more so is the realization that only 420 SBC Churches are growing in a state with a population of 4.5 million people. Some estimates put our lost population at 3.25 million (70 %). Additionally, twenty to forty churches in SC will close their doors each year.

Again, to put that into perspective, if we place the burden of reaching the lost on the shoulders of the 420 growing churches in our state, they will each need to reach 7,738 people. In our state convention, the status quo continues to prevail, unfortunately, the statistics show us that the status quo is a failure.

Every church and every pastor claims that Kingdom Growth is their goal, however, if we take the numbers at face value, we have to admit that it doesn’t appear that their talk matches their walk. Likewise, even at the state convention level, we claim to have evangelism and missions at the fore of our efforts and yet a paltry 3% of our annual in-state budget goes to support church planting, the original Christian mission and the only hope we have of reaching the 3.25 million lost people in our state.

The rallying cry is that money doesn’t make church plants and that conventions don’t plant churches, however our budget numbers reveal where our loyalty lies. The truth, however, is that if evangelization of the lost were truly a priority, we would be willing to fund that evangelization through our state convention rather than to continue to perpetuate old ways of budgeting money. Churches need to be planted because we do not have enough to reach the population of our state, but especially when we consider the urban population.  In South Carolina it is estimated that 75% of SBC churches are located among 25% of the population. That means that 525 churches have the daunting and impossible task of ministering to 3.375 million people, an estimated 2.3 million of whom are not evangelical believers. How can we not see the urgent need for a church planting movement in our state?

We are sick and it is time that we wake up and admit it. For too long we as the South Carolina Baptist Convention (and the SBC) have feigned health while slowly decaying and dying. Yet, we continue to perpetuate unhealthy practices because it is the will of some without ever questioning whether the will of some is the will of THE ONE.

Though numbers do not tell the whole story for everything, the fact that we are not impacting our state (and nation) in a formidable way with the gospel shows that we are not doing the job that we should be doing to fulfill the Great Commission.

Re-alignments and re-organizations are not worthwhile unless there is a true revival among the people of the SCBC.  Our sacred cows must be sacrificed on the alter of the gospel and we must have heart-change that moves us toward creativity in church multiplication. Ed Stetzer’s research has shown that in our state we need to plant at least 63 churches per year if we are to continue to grow as a denomination.  We need ethnic church plants and Anglo-church plants, contemporary and traditional, and we need to plant churches with mother churches who give whole-hearted support.

For South Carolina Baptists to accomplish the goals of evangelizing our state, cooperation across age-barriers, worship-styles, and ethnic groups will be necessary. Cooperation is the best way to accomplish the Great Commission, but that cooperation must be full-bodied and not segmented and cliquish. Part of that cooperation will come only as leaders, young and old, will show up at meetings to make their voices heard. Voting by absence never brings change, it only brings stagnation.

The vote of the State Convention in 2008 did necessarily represent the majority of SC Baptist, but merely the majority of the very few people who showed up to participate in the process. Only 396 people voted for president of the convention last year. Assuming that each of those votes represents one church, less than twenty percent of SCBC churches were represented at the annual meeting of the SCBC last year. Thus, the direction of the convention has been molded by a the majority of a very small minority.

Business meetings are certainly not enjoyable, but if missional leaders in the state of South Carolina desire to see the lost of this state saved, then those leaders are going to have to make time to show up and cast a vote. As hard as it is to realize, participation in the denominational process can make a difference in accomplishing the Great Commission. However, staying home and refusing to participate while complaining about the direction of the Convention does nothing but create division and bitterness.

It may be that with involvement from more missional leaders in associational, state, and national denomination affairs, that the 80% of plateaued and declining churches could become 75% or 70%.  It may be that a revival could begin when “missional” leaders decide to take their mission even to the religious among them. It could be that renewed cooperation will result as young and old leaders come together to learn from the past and dream for the future. We cannot predict the outcome of what may happen if young and missional leaders step-up to the denominational plate, but we can predict the outcome if they don’t, and that outcome is decline, decay, and eventual death of many multitudes of churches and perhaps even a denomination.

I think Driscoll is correct, so what does it mean to be truly missional, and can the rifts in our denomination (and even in evangelicalism) really be defined along these lines?  If so, can we right the ship of the SBC and of evangelicalism by appealing to all churches to refocus around the missional claims of the gospel?  Jurgen Moltmann is helpful here:

It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church (Jurgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, London: SCM Press, 1977, 64).

In other words, the church exists because of the mission of God, not vice versa. To be missional, first and foremost, means to understand one’s place in the big scheme of God’s mission. Churches exist to fulfill the missio Dei (mission of God), not to fulfill the mission of the SBC or the mission of the local church. The local church and denomination are true to the call of God only in as much as they are committed to the mission of God over and above their own mission or comfort level. Unfortunately, many of our churches have transitioned from a gospel center to a community center. Rather than rallying around the Great Commission, we are rallying around fellowship and community. There is opposition, not to global missions so much, but to local missions such as church planting because “a new missional community might hurt my church.”

And, as go the churches, so goes the convention.  As referenced in my article last week, Is the SBC Another Example of Church Decline, churches (and denominations) in decline have a natural tendency to turn inward in isolation and protectionism instead of outward in missions.  As a convention, we must rally around a firm definition of what it means to be missional and encourage our churches to live out that vision.  A missional church does more than support the Cooperative Program and SBC causes. A missional church does more than give to mission causes and go on mission trips, a missional church serves its community grounded firmly in the word of God in culturally relevant ways (See Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson, Comeback Churches).  A missional church is devoted first and foremost to the mission of God in this world, secondly to the success of the local church, and then to their denomination. Missional church pastors think like missionaries and are looking for ways to reach their lost neighbors; not programs but gospel centered relationships. Missional churches take responsibility for sharing the gospel and for growth. When growth doesn’t happen, they ask why rather than make excuses. Missional churches have high expectations.

A missional church is a gospel centered community that is culturally relevant and is working to see the mission of God accomplished in their community and the world.

• Gospel centered means gospel centered, not program driven, but biblically driven. The sermons are grounded in the truths of God’s word and the ministries and programs of the church are scrutinized according to Scripture first.
• To be culturally relevant does not dictate a specific musical style, but instead focuses on the pragmatism necessary to reach the lost. Churches in cowboy towns should be cowboy churches and churches in NYC should be relevant to the culture of NYC while maintaining a strict adherence to biblical norms.
• Finally, working toward seeing the missio Dei accomplished simply means that the church will look to the word to see what God desires to be done, look to the culture to see what needs to be done by the people of God to bring the world in line with God’s will, and then lay aside all excuses and do the work of God, regardless of any negative affect it may have on us personally. Accomplishing the missio Dei will mean giving a voice to the lost in budget meetings and the life of the church.  Missional churches will care more about reaching the lost than about having their preferences.

Jonah: A Lesson In Missional Ministry

Jonah was forced by God to accomplish the mission of God even though it was not Jonah’s desire.  It may be that many Southern Baptists (even me?) need to take a lesson from Jonah.  God’s misison for our world is greater than our personal desires.  Even when we don’t like what we are called to do, we still have a responsibility to accomoplish the mission of God in this world because he has commanded us to do it.  Jonah took the Word of God, proclaimed it to the Ninevites in a culturally relevant way, and, inspite of his own selfish desires, became a catalyst for the accomplishment of God’s mission–the salvation of Ninevah. It will not be easy to right the ship of the SBC–or any other denomination in decline–but if it is to happen, it must come as pastors and local churches rally around a definition and lifestyle of what it means to be missional.  I do not doubt that my definition is lacking, but my hope and prayer is that it is a beginning.  Let us all pray that as we focus on the Great Commission, we will seek to be missional and not selfish.  We will seek to multiply and not divide.  We will cooperate and not isolate, and ultimately we will glorify God and his kingdom above our selfish desires to build our own kingdoms.