January, 1996 

Dear ICE Subscriber:

Whenever I think "dispensationalism," I see Oliver Hardy telling Stan Laurel: "Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into." But Hardy's face is Hal Lindsey's.

The third millennium looms ahead. It will be interesting to see how many Rapture paperbacks will appear between now and the year 2000. If we do not see a shelf of new Rapture paperbacks, then the geriatric phrase of dispensationalism has arrived: catheter time!

Meanwhile, nothing worth funding has replaced the old Scofieldism. The new dispensationalism is an affair of the seminary classroom, and not very many of them. There is no book, no study Bible, and no curriculum that sets forth the details of the new dispensationalism. People in the pews have never heard of it. Yet the next generation of dispensational theological leaders — today, a mere a handful of men — seems to have abandoned the traditional Scofield system. There have been no announcements to the donors about this shift of opinion because the donors might stop donating. But one by one, the Scofield seminaries have substituted church growth studies for academic Scofieldism.

There is a big problem for popular Scofieldism: no Antichrist–no imminent Rapture. If the Antichrist will make his appearance during the seven-year Great Tribulation, he ought to be visible today. A small army of designated Antichrists has been paraded before faithful donors for the last century. Recently, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Saddam Hussein have been semi-identified . . . with big question marks on the book covers to avoid libel suits or retroactive laughter when the might-be Antichrist dies, or is deposed, or just fades away. As I have said before, it was a good thing that Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan (6) was so beloved of the fundamentalists, despite his collection of rabbits feet.

If there is no army that might be able to pose a military threat to the State of Israel, then the Rapture is surely not imminent. What military force today is prepared to take on the nuclear-ready Israelis? The Arabs? Unified by the smiling Yassir Arafat and his new bride? Russia, with its Autonomous Republic of the Month club? Red China, which could barely control a conference of United Nations feminists? Will NATO become a threat to Israel's security? NATO, which took years to contain the Bosnian Serbs? NATO, with the U.S. as its leading member? Will the United States become the Antichrist's agency of oppression? I have doubts that any Baptist pastor is going to raise the money pay off the new gym — sorry: family life center — with a series of sermons on America the Antichrist.

Without an identifiable future enemy of the State of Israel, dispensationalism will have to rely on its scholarship rather than sensationalism as the basis of its self-image: a terrifying prospect for dispensationalism. Dispensational scholarship has always been a minor factor, and traditional Scofieldian scholarship today is little more than a series of reprints of pre-1970 books. Even if the movement isn't geriatic, its theologians are.

With dispensationalism is heading into its Medicare phase, what is going to replace it? That is the problem. It is not just dispensationalism's problem. It is the problem facing American evangelical Protestant Christianity. The United States still provides most of the foreign missionaries and most of the Bibles in the world. For the present, the United States is the center of Protestant Christianity. Where are we headed?

We can't beat something with nothing. Who has the "something" that will fill the vacuum when dispensationalism goes to its reward by way of the rest home rather than the Rapture? Where is Church growth taking place today? The mega-churches get the attention because they are big and because there are so few of them that hard-pressed journalists can meet their deadlines with a half dozen interviews. But the mega-churches, like medieval cathedrals, are not where most people worship. They are representative manifestations of popular ecclesiastical trends, but the typical man in the pew is somewhere else.

The Hymnal or the Overhead Projector

If you want a handy mental image of the ecclesiastical competition today, picture two things: a hymnal and an overhead projector. A hymnal has 400 to 600 songs with three or more stanzas each, with musical notation for four-part harmony. An overhead projection has two brief verses and no musical notation.

A hymnal says: pews with hymnal racks, long musical tradition, musically literate congregation, constrained liturgy, and piano or organ. A choir is optional. An overhead projector says: metal folding chairs, post-1975 charismatic lyrics, two-stanza theology, five repetitions, tunes suitable for children, worshippers raised on rock & roll, lots of newcomers, guitars, and a 500-watt PA system. Neck ties are optional.

A hymnal says: wide age distribution, mature leadership, liturgical complacency, a sense of place, "been there, tried that, didn't work," humanist-accredited seminary, public schools vs. Christian schools, printed Sunday school curriculum (bland), shaking hands, Rotary Club, remarried divorcees, and silence on abortion. An overhead projector says: young families, untested leadership, liturgical experimentation, a sense of discovery, "Spirit-led, new thing, works at Willow Creek," no seminary, Christian schools vs. home schools, "let's all share" Sunday schools, hugging, 700 Club, marriage counselling, and whispers on abortion.

A hymnal says stable membership. An overhead projector says church growth. A hymnal says "baptisms = funerals." An overhead projector says "baptisms > funerals." A hymnal says past, present, and predictable future. An overhead projector says present and open-ended future.

I think the psychology that undergirds the use of the overhead projector is not very amenable to dispensationalism. It places too great an emphasis on innovation and new possibilities. An attitude favorable to experimentation is not conducive to the guaranteed failure of all experiments, followed by the Rapture. The youth of the members and the youth of their children keep things more future-oriented. Teaching your child at home is less conducive to the Rapture mentality than sending your child off to public school.

There is another factor: pastors of overhead projector churches probably did not attend seminary. If they did, it was not a dispensational seminary. They have not gone through the traditional pastoral indoctrination program. Their theology is eclectic. They did not get converted in Hal Lindsey's 1970's. They did not read The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon, or if they did, it is long forgotten — the foolishness of youth. Because traditional dispensationalism has regarded culture as nothing but a convenient source of Oliver Hardy-type sermons, it is out of touch. Being out of touch is out of step with the with-it character of overhead projector liturgy.

The overhead projector is the primary technological wedge of the church growth movement. The church growth movement is interdenominational. It tends to undermine denominational distinctives, beginning with liturgical distinctives. To the extent that liturgy is applied theology, the overhead projector undermines theological distinctives. In this sense, the church growth movement is like the two Great Awakenings, especially the Second: 1800 to about 1840. Shared experiences are seen as more important than theology. Theology is regarded as of marginal importance. The lowest common denominator principle takes over. Church growth hymnody reflects this. So does contemporary Christian music.

The interdenominational mind-set of the church growth movement is conducive to parachurch ministries. But parachurch ministries tend to be highly specialized, corresponding to direct-mail positioning techniques. They also tend to be practical: family matters, financial matters, abortion matters, and educational matters. In short, earthly things really do matter. The emphasis on improving things is not conducive to traditional dispensationalism. Beverly LaHaye's call to 400,000 Christian women to get organized gets a lot more response today than Tim LaHaye's call to get ready for the Rapture.

Billy Graham or Rush Limbaugh

Who has more influence in Christian circles today, Billy Graham or Rush Limbaugh? Can you imagine Rush Limbaugh going on Cal Thomas' TV show, as Billy Graham did last February, with this message? "I think the top social issue of our time may be ecology. I think it's more dangerous to the future of this planet than the atomic bomb. And I'm going to start speaking out on that." Then he said he has "reservations" on anti-abortion legislation prohibiting abortions in cases of "incest or rape or where the mother's life is in danger, very similar to the positions that the pope takes." On the contrary, the Pope is much more hard core than this. In any case, why should Graham cite the Pope on this issue?

What has happened to Graham? Recently, not a thing. It happened a long time ago, beginning with John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s, donation of $75,000 to fund Graham's 1958 New York City Crusade. (Collier and Horowitz, The Rockefellers, Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1976, p. 130n.) For the first time in his career, Graham accepted co-sponsorship by the National Council of Churches. Ever since, he has promoted two things: neo-evangelicalism and cultural relevance. He fraternizes with Presidents and Vice Presidents. But his attempts at cultural relevance have been variations of Oliver Hardy's lament. Think of his book, Approaching Hoofbeats. This is the old dispensationalism. It marks him as a man of the fundamentalist past. To keep up, he has felt compelled to "get relevant" by adopting the latest fad, such as Al Gore's environmentalism.

Rush Limbaugh shows no signs of being a Christian, but he makes more sense than environmentalist tree-huggers. Once again, Christians are caught between two forms of humanism in their half-hearted attempts to become culturally relevant: right-wing Enlightenment humanism vs. left-wing Enlightenment humanism. The former outlook has more supporters in the fundamentalist camp, but the latter tends to attract neo-evangelical spokesmen, i.e., the Christianity Today-Wheaton College, Gordon College axis.

The reason why Protestant Christians have been caught in this trap since about 1700 is that they have refused to go to the Bible to develop authoritative social theories and policies. They have relied on Unitarian and humanist scholars and organizers to provide a series of interpretive frameworks to deal with the issues of the day. Two centuries ago, American Christians had to choose between John Adams' conservative Unitarianism and Thomas Jefferson's libertarian Unitarianism. Northern European Christians had to choose among Adam Smith's liberal humanism, Edmund Burke's conservative humanism, Adam Weishaupt's conspiratorial humanism, or Napoleon's autocratic humanism.

This has been the self-imposed dilemma of Protestants for three centuries. You can't beat something with nothing. They have sat beneath the tables of humanism, feasting on the crumbs. If you think I'm wrong, ask yourself: Why do conservative Protestant seminaries seek academic accreditation from organizations run by theological liberals? Because those who run them are persuaded in their heart of hearts that Christians are incapable of establishing meaningful standards in any field of endeavor. Christian intellectuals have crawled on their bellies for three centuries, begging for recognition. Today, they make this pathetic offer to liberal theologians who regard them as amusing primitives: "I'll say that you're a Christian if you'll say that I'm a scholar."

It's time to start making up for three centuries of academic dust-eating.

Sincerely,