In the 2002 film, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the main character, Toula, enumerates the primary expectations of a Greek woman:

… nice Greek girls are supposed to do three things in life. Marry Greek boys. Make Greek babies, and feed everyone, until the day we die.

Many of us (particularly those who can laugh at themselves) can chuckle along with the characters in what at first may appear to be a bigoted view of the world. The father states:

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who are Greek and those who wish they were Greek.

This phenomenon is not limited to the Greek culture but exists in many cultures of first generation immigrants to the United States of America. We would suggest that this is not really designed from evil motives but rather is the result of finding oneself in a foreign culture. It is an attempt to preserve a particular cultural identity or worldview and protect children from abandoning their heritage, adopting beliefs and practices which are considered to be inferior at best and dangerous at worst.

With the dawning of the twentieth century, (more…)

And the last part, I might add. Dear reader I hope you are not too weary of looking at our little section of upstate New York. I want to visit it one last time. In previous posts we have looked at the philosophical and theological headwaters of the Culture-Driven church. I now want to go “downstream” a bit and consider the political thought that also contributed to the Twentieth Century church.

I think it’s been established that the Burned-over district was a hotbed of change (and probably some hope as well). “New” was everywhere. New men, new methods, New Thought and new movements dominated the landscape. It is no accident that women’s suffrage (the right to vote), abolition, and the temperance movement spring up in New York at this time. As with any human movement, these were conglomerations of good intentions, justice, and genuine concern. However, they were also the occasions for injustice, manipulation, and the temptations of power. Listen to Lyman Beecher in a letter to his friend Nathaniel Berman (from Whitney Cross’s book):

There is nothing to which the minds of good men, when once passed the bounds of sound discretion, and launched on an ocean of feeling and experiment, may not come . . . nothing so terrible and unmanageable as the fire and whirlwind of human passion, when once kindled by misguided zeal . . . for in every church, there is wood, hay, and stubble which will be sure to take fire on the wrong side.

It should give us all pause how movements built on good intentions can be warped by our own tendencies to “crusade.” As C.S. Lewis warned, what begins as the political aspect of our faith can quickly become (more…)

In Revivalism in the Burned Over District Part 1 I attempted to illustrate something simple: Philosophical movements often precede and influence religious movements. This was an attempt to connect the dots. But before I illustrate how religious movements precede and influence social and political movements I have to take time to unpack some more of this revivalism. I have discovered that Finney’s perfectionism is far more important than I had originally thought.

I like the analogy of the streams rather than dots. Connecting dots could imply direct connection from one thing to another. As I warned earlier, history just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, connecting dots doesn’t show how strong the influence of one thing is on another. But the stream analogy does. When you look at a river, it is made up of streams of water that flow (more…)

I grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt. North-east Mississippi. Home of Elvis, Faulkner, and a church on every corner. I have been to more revival services than I can count. As I grew in my Christian walk, I must confess, that I became a bit cynical about revival services. I made jokes about the Holy Spirit coordinating with local pastors to plan the summer revival season. But in all seriousness, I had never wondered about where this–what should we call it? tradition? practice? habit? comes from. Over the last few weeks we have been exploring the intellectual and ideological history of protestant Christianity. I want to continue that with some commentary about Revivalism in the 1800s. Ron Henzel and Don Veinot have discussed the so-called “Burned Over District” in upstate New York as the watershed location for millennial heresies like the Millerites, the visions of Joseph Smith, and the spiritualism of New Thought. When I started delving deeper into that particular time and place what I found was fascinating and disturbing. History, it seems not only repeats itself but is chock full of intricate traps and snares (more…)

What is it about Christmas that draws us every year to celebrations of this holiday? What is so special about Christmas?

Christmas is a special time because of the happiness it brings. It’s a time of giving and receiving, a family time, a time when we feel especially close to friends and loved ones. It is a time of happy reminiscing; remembering the carefree happy days of our childhood. We hear an old favorite carol, we catch the scent of balsam, we see the bright lights; and then, if we’re lucky, we get that blanket of white, and we are transported back to lighter days. Yes, Christmas is a happy time.

Yet, if we were to talk to counselors, we would find the picture is not all rosy at Christmas. Suicide is up, and depression is rampant… Does this mean Christmas is not a very special time after all? No - the opposite is true. Aren’t people sad because they know it is a special time, and the holiday they are experiencing just doesn’t live up to the expectations of the day that they hold in their hearts? Some folks are grieving over a recent loss. Perhaps this is the first Christmas without mom, or dad, a beloved spouse, or a child. Christmas heartache is the worst heartache of all. The bright gaiety of the season might even seem to mock their pain.

Some are sad because they are pining for the ideal childhood Christmases of hazy memory. What current Christmas could compare with the Christmases of innocence? For some people, it may be the years when (more…)

As with many holidays (originally Holy Days but in modern day usage has been contracted to holidays) Thanksgiving has become a largely commercial and secular time. As we consider The First Thanksgiving we see that:

The English colonists we call Pilgrims celebrated days of thanksgiving as part of their religion. But these were days of prayer, not days of feasting

Initially this was a time to spend before God, in communication with Him as a community and as individuals. The First Thanksgiving rightly points out:

Our national holiday really stems from the feast held in the autumn of 1621 by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag to celebrate the colony’s first successful harvest.

In their search for religious freedom and escape from religious persecution by (more…)

As Don mentioned last week, we are starting an extended project that I have labeled in my mind “The Culture-Driven Church.” The idea is to trace how culture (e.g. scientific, economic, spiritual, and psychological) have influenced the contemporary church and its mission. That’s the big goal. I suggested to Don that we use our meager megaphone (this blog) and our endearing and astute audience (that’s you dear reader) to help us sort out the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Culture Driven Church. Last blog Don painted a picture. This blog I’m going to ask some questions and introduce the project as a whole.

Now some of you might accuse us of pummeling a certain kind of deceased equine–namely “Modern church bad–Emergent Church bad” In fact we might be accused of the opposite of the philosophers in Acts 17 who were enamored with all things new. We might be accused of being curmudgeons (more…)