I appreciate Willimon for the same reasons that I appreciate Hauerwas -- neither are willing to bend the knee to the liberal Protestant deism that's profoundly shaping many mainline churches today. Willimon refuses to believe that the Enlightenment is the greatest thing to happen to the Church, nor does he tolerate the idea that theology steeped in individual experience (a liberal AND conservative epidemic) has anything to do with the Gospel. Instead, Willimon believes that the Triune God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - is present in our lives, shaping us into disciples, and calling us into relationship. Mainly, Willimon just speaks the truth to conservatives and liberals who've attempted (and often succeeded) at founding their churches on the values of the Republican or Democratic party, rather than the Christian story. Needless to say, what he has to say is extremely refreshing, especially for Christian who can't seem to find a church that speaks out against war and greed AND takes Scripture and church tradition seriously.
As I was searching around for some Willimon gems, I came across a keynote address given at Christ College at Oxford University. It's entitled, "What if Wesley Was Right?" I realize that I know very little about the essence of Wesley's theology, which is why I found this piece particularly interesting, especially in light of the changes and fractures occurring in my own church (the Anglican Communion) and the repercussions those changes have on the Church catholic. It's long, and worth the read; though I can't really do justice summarizing the entire address, here are some parts that made me shout "Amen!"
- To ask, 'What if Wesley was right?' is to allow ourselves to be challenged by Wesley’s grasp of reality. And if we should be so engaged by him, interrogated by him, and if we find ourselves thinking about God with him, why, we might again become theologians ourselves.
- Rather than assume that the task of the interpreter is to make the text more meaningful to sophisticated, modern people who drive Volvos, Wesley seems to assume that the task of the text is to make the interpreters’ lives more difficult."
- Too troubled by our expectations of what our audience could and could not hear, we reduced the gospel to a set of sappy platitudes anybody could accept and no sensitive, thinking person could resist. “Open minds, Open hearts, Open doors.” Our testimony got reduced to whatever the market could bear.
- Spent Calvinism, sliding into a renovated Deism, has triumphed... God is all distant concept, abstraction, and essence (Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity) and never speaking, revealing, troubling subject. We’ve got just enough God to give our lives a kind of spiritual tint without so much God as to interfere with our running the world as we damn well please.
- Of course, most congregations that I know love such moralistic Deism. The subtext is always, You are gods unto yourselves. Through this insight, this set of principles, this well applied idea you can save yourselves by yourselves. Whether preached by an alleged theological conservative or would be liberal, we’re all Schliermachians now. Theology is reduced to anthropology because unlike Wesley, we’re obsessed with ourselves rather than God. God is humanity spoken in a resonate, upbeat voice backed up with power-point presentation. Our noble Arminianism really does degenerate into Pelagianism when the divine gift of divine-human synergism loses its divine initiation. My image of us United Methodists on Sunday morning is that we come to church with pencil and pad ready to get our assignments for the week, not from God but from the preacher: “This week church, work on your sexism, racism, and be nice to sales clerks. Come back next week and I’ll give you another assignment.” God thus becomes the patron of politics of the right (IRD) or the left (NCC) in a last ditch effort to give God something useful to do.
- Today the Methodist movement, at least in it North American and European vestiges, suffers from the debilitating effects of a truncated theology. We are attempting to revive a church on a too thin description of God.
- When asked, “What qualities do you most desire in pastors who are employed to start new congregations?” Borden replied, “They must be joyfully Trinitarian and orthodox in their theology, stressing the redeeming work of God in Jesus Christ.” I thought I was hearing Wesley.
- On the cross, Jesus didn’t just do something about our guilt; Jesus defeated the kingdom of Satan and established the Kingdom of God; Jesus recreated the world and us, making us into a new people who had a fresh start in life.
- It’s not radical for us to think that we save ourselves by ourselves. What’s radical is to assert a God who is able to work signs and wonders... The Enlightenment still holds our imaginations captive and that captivity is killing us.
