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Be a ‘Come-Outer’!
October 25th, 2009 | 8 Comments 
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Disestablishment in History
“Revolution” is such a polluted word anymore, what does it mean? Religions and institutions hijacked the word.
Returning to 'the ancient practices' of Medieval Christianity is Revolution?
“Revolution” now means returning to the Dark Ages—literally—returning to old, stone buildings, with chants, creepy incense, and suffocating rituals. Brian McLaren and others from Emergent Village, Inc. are marketing that dark, superstitious world as “Revolution”. It’s hugely-popular, and it’s anything but Revolution.
So “Revolution” means “conservative” now? It doesn’t make any sense, but they say it does. And they’re making big bucks selling it.
“Revolution” also means neomonasticism (“new monk-ism”)! But how is this possible? Perhaps monks were revolutionary 1,500 years ago, but isn’t monasticism a well-established institution today? Neomonasticism is merely an old institution refurbished somewhat:
Have you ever thought about becoming a monk or nun? What if you could without shaving your head or swearing celibacy? People of all ages and walks of life are engaging neomonasticism — living in community, sharing all possessions, engaging in a rhythm of a worshipful life, launching out in missional action. Neomonastic Web
Neomonasticism and 'Spiritual Disciplines' may be refreshing--but not Revolution.
So “Revolution” revives old institutions now? Usually Revolution burns down institutions, but in religious parlance it means returning to old institutions? So typical of religion to quash dissent and subdue creativity! They outlawed Revolution in the old days, but today they just hijack Revolution.
The new definitions of “Revolution” are bewildering and cloud the concept beyond usefulness. It means:
- A deeper spiritual life? (Advocates of Spiritual Disciplines somehow confuse spiritual refreshment with Revolution!)
- A cyber-church? (Is Revolution simply a different way to ‘do church’?)
- An Emerging church? (Revolution means investigation, conversation?)1
- An artistic church with contemporary music? Perhaps this describes an art gallery, but it surely falls outside the definition of Revolution.
These may be “revolutionary” in the sense of “new and novel”, but the difference between Revolution and “revolutionary” is the difference between a Hydrogen bomb and a sparkler.
Disestablishment
One of the early Disestablishers
Ebenezer Erskine kindled fires in 1733 in Scotland, and flames spread to England, roared across America and toppled mighty institutions—slavery being the most infamous. This is Revolution, unambiguous and pure: as it spreads, slavery is quashed.
Real Revolution means Disestablishment.
The “Free” churches, as they call themselves, are derived from Ebenezer’s Disestablishment movement: Free Presbyterians, Free Methodists, Free Episcopalians, Evangelical Free, and a large variety of others. Disestablishment continues still today with the rise of non-denominational Christian groups.
All these groups underwent Disestablishment at different times:
Disestablishment – to deprive (an organization, especially a national Church) of its official status. —Oxford English Dictionary
Disestablishment started slowly, as it always does, with a few brave souls: Ebenezer and friends left what they called “the Established Church” of Scotland because the government seized the people’s power to choose their own leaders. They saw The Establishment as the enemy of biblical Christianity:
When we say that the Church is ‘Established’ what is implied is that by an act of parliament it is declared to be the National Church, that it is intimately connected with the state and…enjoys a privileged position. Free Church of Scotland
For 50 years Disestablishment grew and filtered into England where they were called Disestablishmentarians. Their campaign to breakaway from The Establishment was called Disestablishmentarianism.
Those who fought to maintain The Establishment called themselves Antidisestablishmentarians, and their political movement was called Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Disestablishment hits the NY Times front page--200 years after it started!
Thus, the most-convoluted word in the English language describes Institutionalized Christianity—also known as The Establishment, or Antidisestablishmentarianism.
Is this a surprise?
The Come-Outers
A liberator who got tied up
When the movement jumped the Atlantic, Americans greatly-simplified it (as Americans do) and launched the Come-Outers. These Christians were hatched during the Second Great Awakening (of Charles Finney fame, another Scotsman). They detested slavery and the Church Institutions supporting slavery. The Come-Outers spawned radical abolitionists, a mix of Christians and secularists who took a leading role in dismantling slavery.
William Garrison was a famous Christian Come-Outer who led the movement in the spirit of the Jesus Revolution—non-violent, but with poignancy in his famous words:
I am in earnest – I will not equivocate – I will not excuse – I will not retreat a single inch – and I will be heard! —Garrison
They took their name Come-Outers from the Bible:
Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, said the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. (2 Cor. 6:17 – Old King James Version)
What an appropriate description of Antidisestablishmentarianism! “Touch not the unclean thing!”
Garrison’s Extremism
But Garrison’s teachings became entangled with politics. He taught “the unclean thing” was any corrupt institution, not merely the spiritual counterfeits of God’s Kingdom. To “come out” meant disobeying the laws and cease supporting the morally-corrupt institutions of government, period.
Abolitionists once burned the Constitution, similar to this desecration.
Thus Garrison became one of the earliest Christian anarchists, and seemed extremely dangerous—even though he never actually was an anarchist, his words were threatening. By today’s standards his position was heroic, because he championed women’s rights and vigorously denounced any tolerance of slavery. (He also burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution at a rally like flag-burners in our era).
Most Come-Outers left Garrison’s extremism and organized radical abolitionist organizations that attracted more followers and brought Lincoln to power. Slavery was doomed, even if a bloody civil war remained to be fought.
Garrison is a useful picture of the extremism of human-engineered Revolution mixed with beauty and genius of biblical Disestablishment.
On the negative side, he spurned the guidance of Jesus to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21) To use the Jesus people for the toppling human kingdoms (or to replace human government, as Garrison advocated) is to create a very Kosmos-entangled world. Christian political activism–even though it may be political dissent–is just as mistaken as Constantine’s effort to mold Christianity into a bureaucracy of the Roman Empire. Both extremes are abusing Body of Christ, which is intended for Disestablishment, not for building or refining The Establishment.
On the positive side, the beauty of the Jesus Revolution was evident in the work of the Come-Outers and their predecessors, because they unleashed sweet Disestablishment of the Established Church.
Garrison eloquently stated the beauty of Disestablishment near the end of his life. After witnessing the civil war, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th Amendment terminating slavery, he said with satisfaction:
“It is enough for me that every yoke is broken, and every bondman set free.” Garrison
Footnotes:
- See McLarenism for the Emergent take on Revolution. [↩]
Filed under: History · Tags: church history, cover-stories, emerging church, lead-stories, Revolution Webs
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I really like how this article clarifies terms. “Revolution” sounds exciting but ends up confusing when too many voices call for it. It is so ironic how the emerging church has twisted revolution to mean a return to instititional trappings.
But not many are calling for disestablishment these days, though Jesus clearly does. This word makes it so clear that we are to be separate from the kosmos and its institutions.
Yes Kalie, isn’t it odd that McLaren & Co. are so willing to challenge even the truth of the Gospel (quite radical) but they dare not challenge the institutions of the church? Are these institutions really so untouchable?
It’s incredibly ironic and dangerous. Anele & I read this article together and she was like, “Why would anyone want these traditions?” Institutional “Christianity” doesn’t make any sense, but it’s so hard for those entrenched in it to see. Hence books like “Why We Love the Church: In Defense of Institutions and Organized Religion.”
“These may be revolutionary or novel, but the difference between Revolution and ‘revolutionary’ is the difference between an explosion and a sparkle.”
Haha, that’s awesome! It reminds me of infomercials that claim their product is SO revolutionary (Think: snuggie).
Really though, I love how you say wherever disestablishment spreads, there are captives being set free. That’s obviously exactly what Christ came to do, to set people free of their slavery to the kosmos and to sin. It’s Satan who comes in and convinces people to become enslaved, once again, this time through the church to be enslaved to empty traditions and dead works. Traditions are fine, until they replace the message of the gospel which is freedom!
I hate to be so harsh on old McClaren but sadly he just makes it so easy. He claims to be a revolutionary but he is doing the same old thing. Singing songs is how you are revolutionary? I don’t believe that at all. God is probably looking down and firmly planting his hand on his own face and thinking to himself: “stop it, oh please stop, thats not right, you are just degrading yourself.” That is not revolutionary at all, that is just conformity.
There are so many people in this world that claim to be revolutionary for God. When they are just legalistic pansies who are the exact same group the Christ and even Paul were up against in the Gospels, Acts, and Galatians. We are free now, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Gal 5:1) Freedom allows us to come out. We are able to be bold in Christ we have a new identity and are no longer under the law. Why be so boring, why live a life of slavery? We are free now, that gives us power and we are able to go out and spread this message and invite others into eternal life.
Where does it say we cant cuss, or we must have a worship service, or we have to ask 5 times every other minute to give money for the church? Living a life for the Lord is fun and exciting. Its a life where we can see the light and experience true joy, not a temporary joy where i have to go back and get my fix every other day.
I love this article very well put, we must “come out” (of slavery) and experience true joy, not with what the world says true joy comes from.
Nice article Keith. It really is sad that the term Revolution has been destroyed and weekend so much. Revolution is a complete change in the way things are, in place of something new. I think of the American Revolution, where the Americans stood up and destroyed the colonial domination and replaced it with democracy. Even with the examples you listed with Erskine, he destroyed the established church, in favor for a better biblical meeting.
In the spirit of your analysis, I agree. What we humans fear, who by God’s grace even come to consider the historical validity of the resurrection,is ‘mere’ Christianity. (C.S. Lewis) So throughout history you will find that the authentic practice of knowing God and living as Jesus lived, loving as Jesus loved, and knowing as Jesus knew — the ‘kind’ of life only appropriable by way of transcendent intervention resulting in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and his regenerative noetic work on the individual’s conception of plausibility — a source of continual solicitations from noble ‘others’.
What we seem to harbor is a deep animosity for what concerns the ‘loathsome’ notion that perhaps God should be the end of all means, and that discussions of God independent from Jesus in history are not very meaningful.
IF the above notion is TRUE, THEN Christ is the center of history and the source of all meaning and we better get it right that nothing in the universe couples as an ‘AND’ to Christianity. But we add chanting and burning incense, aromatherapy and meditation pillows, tough asceticism, hedonistic liberalism (the Jesus movement), women’s rights, indigenous people’s rights, world hunger, human rights, animal rights, gay rights, transgendered, nongendered, manygendered rights, pro-life, pro-choice, pro-God, pro-hipster, hopster and many headed lobster rights — it goes on and on and on.
History is full of examples of failures we — the Church — (notice even now we are trying couple the Church in history with the word ‘emergent’) should be learning from, but we keep failing to understand. We fail to understand because we suffer from a serious syndrome of learning disabilities. First, we don’t know how to read. We don’t understand how to read history in general and our lives in particular. (A particularly meddlesome character by the name of Dan Allender is perhaps one of the only popular figures who is doing anything about that problem.) Second, we don’t know how to think. No longer is logic a requirement for a college degree in most subjects. But there are certainly plenty of courses required in the literary arts which fall under the category of ‘criticism’. Many in political science, history, literature, and literary criticism graduate knowing how to ‘critique’ without knowing anything about argument. Third, we don’t know how to listen. Most people in the media respond to questions they aren’t asked, fail to respond to questions they are, and for the most part leave the general impression that when they are in dialog at all, they are doing little more than competing for the next word. Lastly, not knowing how to read, think, or listen, the invariable consequence is not knowing how to speak. The ‘rappers’ are certainly saying something. They are saying something about a global degeneracy in the capacity for human conduct. They are making a statement about a bacchanalian end, for which they are entitled licence and means. They are revealing the truth of God’s consequential judgment upon the arrogance of our educational system and its view of ‘progress’.
For God has chosen the shameful things and the despised things, the things which are nothing, in order that he might nullify the things that are.
What we really need so desperately is not a retreat to a neo-monasticism — isn’t that so predictable? — responding to the chaos and fragmentation of a world without love by putting our tail between our legs, actually hiding in charismatic communities ostensibly functioning to serve God. It’s not even wrong! Of course we’re to be in community, but not in hiding.
Individuals need to plead with God to reveal the stubborn hatred of God that actually lives within them. Those who receive mercy and are able to see that light of the gospel shining in their hearts turn to Jesus as savior. They then MUST go and teach others whom God is saving of the salvation which is in Christ with a view toward a discipleship centered on King Jesus as instructor, tutor, and healer of our diseased minds and hearts. And let NOTHING be added. For in Jesus is the truth and life and way of God humanified.
Isn’t the key to the movement of disestablishmentarism, a result of the “anointing” of ppl or a person by the Spirit to proclaim the release of the captives? It seems the key to proclaiming the good news is empowerment by the Holy Spirit. This “Spirit” power is crucial if a movement like the Great Awakening or even the Jesus Movement is to ignite. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit that we minister and proclaim.
Should there not be a greater emphasis on the works and power (dunamei) of the Holy Spirit than on what man has done? Studying ecclesiological theology and history is good, but what of the empowering of the Spirit? And what of this anointing of the Spirit to proclaim release captives? Is this manifest today?