What I am terming emotionalism is really a form of ethical emotivism. This is the view that all ethical statements are really statements of emotional attitude, not universal moral duties. So for instance the claim; “murder is wrong” is really saying “murder brings about bad feelings”. In the Church, emotivism of this sort manifests itself primarily in speaking of how humans relate to God. Specifically, Christian emotivism states that all claims about God’s relationship to man and vice versa are really emotional claims. So saying “God is with me” is equated to saying “I feel God is with me”. Similarly sins are seen as reducible to emotions. Pride, for instance, is equated with feeling you are greater than you are. Effectively emotions are said to be the only, or at least primary way to relate to God or know that He is there.
Implied from this is the idea that the primary way we relate to God is on an individual basis. This is where the idea of Christianity as a relationship with Christ comes in. Before the advent of emotivism in the Church, the primary way to encounter God was at church and within the church community, thus the ornate architecture present in many Orthodox, Catholic and Mainline Protestant churches. This sort of individualism means that the primary aspect of Christianity is the inner transformation of the Christian through spiritual experience and sanctification rather than the more sacramental and communitarian thinking of Mainline Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox denominations.
In addition to this emotionalism as I am defining it is influenced by Romanticism in its affirmation that Romantic or Erotic love is the highest form of love instead of the love between friends as it was before the 19th century. This means that the Bible is interpreted in light of the view that for God to love us, He must desire an intimate relationship with us, similar to that between a husband and wife. In addition to this it is further assumed, as it is in Romanticism, that love is primarily an emotion, or a description of how we feel about someone.
Finally, emotionalism is influenced by psychology in that it assumes God is most concerned with our psychological well-being. Thus positive encouragement and therapeutic spirituality are of primary importance and are the end goal of all endeavors. For example, many pastors claim that following God is meant to bring an immense feeling of inner peace. Moreover, Christianity and religion itself is seen as a means of comfort in a persons life. The justification of Christianity on this view, involves proving it is beneficial and transformative in your life.
A more concise definition of emotionalism therefore would be this: the view that the Christian life is best understood as an individual transformation through an emotional and intimate relationship with God and that Christ’s atonement and resurrection were meant to establish said intimate relationships.
As innocuous as this view might seem I believe it is at the root of most well recognized problems within the Evangelical Church today.
The Feminization of Christianity:
The feminization of Christianity is seen most clearly in the pews. Across the Western world women significantly outnumber men in churches. In American Evangelical churches, 57% are women and in American Mainline Protestant churches 66% are woman. In 1992 43% of men attended church but by 1996 only 28% did Not only are there more women than men in churches but women are also more active in church than men (1). Sociologist George Barna noted that by the mid-1990’s, "women are twice as likely to attend a church service during any given week. Women are also 50 percent more likely than men to say they are ‘religious’ and to state that they are ‘absolutely committed’ to the Christian faith” (2). In my own experience I can attest to this phenomenon as well. Most of the most committed Christians I know are women who are often off on mission trips and/or preparing for them.
What explains this massive disparity between men and women across church denominations? Leon Podle proposes that it is in fact because churches have become too sentimental. The truth of this connection seems apparently demonstrable, perhaps most prominently in ministries such as Joyce Meyer and Joel Olsteen. Its difficult to listen to a sermon today without hearing about how Christ desires a relationship with us and how we should accept Christ into our hearts. Worship songs make Jesus sound like our lover more than our Lord and Bible Studies end up mostly being long belabored discussions about our feelings toward God and our struggles to nurture those feelings.
The only people who get upset with me about my position that Christianity isn’t a relationship with Christ are women. I’ve never once heard a man be passionate about emotionalism, most men I know in the Church just tolerate it. Regardless of whether or not women are naturally more emotional than men, it is certainly true that women are discouraged from intellectual pursuits in American culture. Sociologists have long despaired at the utter absence of women in fields of science (3). Women are encouraged from childhood to be more sensitive and emotional, while men are encouraged to be strong and assertive ().
Closely connected to the Feminization of Christianity is the spread of anti-intellectualism among Christians. Increasingly Christians equate discussions of theology and apologetics with judgmental, heartless fundamentalism. Just for writing this blog post, I would be considered contentious in many Christian circles. There are also Christians who maintain that higher education is harmful to the Christian and for pastors especially. Isn’t scripture meant to be plain to us? After all the Holy Spirit is within us, giving us guidance and teaching us the true meaning of scriptural truth. Myron Horst writes, "If we are to have true revival in the church today the church needs to reject its focus on religious education and credentialing that is patterned after the world’s method of education. Pastor’s need to reject their education and go to God and ask Him to teach them” (5).
And here in lies the rub, emotionalism dually leads to anti-intellectualism by simultaneously teaching that our emotional and spiritual experiences are far more important than our intellectual pursuits and that because we are so deeply connected to God, surely He will not allow us to misunderstand what we believe. Theology either becomes so mysterious no one can understand it because we cannot access it through our emotions or it becomes so apparent that there can be no disagreement since we are so connected with God. Either way theology as a discipline is made utterly redundant or even dangerous because of emotionalism.
The Rise of the New Atheism:
Beginning in the early 2000’s numerous atheist authors began publishing controversial and best-selling books calling for the end of faith and Christianity. They called this movement “The New Atheism”. Today this movement is largely online, but it is very outspoken. It is not difficult to find articles and videos declaring how obviously wrong and stupid Christianity is. These blokes are usually ex-christians themselves and interestingly share the anti-intellectual assumption described above that all scripture should be obvious and easy to understand for anyone reading it. However, unlike Christians they have concluded that if we actually try to take the Bible as plainly and literally as possible, it makes no sense. You can find hundreds of videos describing the stupidity and contradictions in the Bible.
Christians are also criticized by these same atheists for using God as a crutch and having an imaginary friend called Jesus Christ. Consequently, Christianity is seen not only as an aberrant set of beliefs about reality but a delusional experience. And just like the delusions of those with various psychopathic disorders, Christianity compels people to do insane, undignified and crazy things for their fictional genocidal daddy. More than this Christians are mocked for almost everything they believe from many atheists. For instance Peter Boghossian writes;
“The only way to avoid eternal punishment for sins we never committed from this all-loving God is to accept his son—who is actually himself—as our savior. So … God sacrificed himself to himself to save us from himself. Barking mad!” (6).
Clearly, atheists are not getting answers to there objections that they find compelling. And more often than not, they are very passionate about the stupidity they see in Christianity. In addition, because their criticisms all center around the assumption that Christianity is simple and easy to understand according to its own teachings, its pretty clear they came from churches who taught that the gospel is simple and easy to understand in its entirety. As shown above, emotionalism clearly has something to do with this anti-intellectual attitude. This is because the idea that Christianity is not intellectually based is usually dually paired with the idea that it is experientially, spiritually and emotionally based, specifically in our relationship with Christ. In other words, if Christianity is not intellectually challenging and ideologically transformative, it must be emotionally challenging and experientially transformative. Therefore it is clear that while emotionalism might not have directly caused internet atheism it is certainly nurturing and fostering the movement.
The Juvenilization of Christianity:
Closely related to both the New Atheism and the Feminization of Christianity is the Juvenilization of Christianity, specifically in youth programs. Over the past half century at least there has been an explosion of youth programs across Protestant denominations. This has been matched by the rise of contemporary worship music, church merchandizing and . Church historian Thomas Bergler has written a book on this very issue. He points out, and quite correctly, that church services have become more focused on the entertainment value of sermons and worship than the depth and impact of their spiritual message. The last sermon I went to was about how the gospel relates to the Matrix, no joke. But what exactly is the juvenilization of Christianity? Bergler defines it this way,
“Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Christians of all ages. It begins with the praiseworthy goal of adapting the faith to appeal to the young. But it sometimes ends badly, with both youth and adults embracing immature versions of the faith” (7).
This involves a consumeristic, low responsibility, entertainment based approach to ministry that is extremely prevalent in churches today. Bergler argues this church culture began in the 1930’s where pastors formed youth groups for the first time in an effort to invigorate American youth to social and religious activism. Over time these efforts developed into an approach of competing against “secular” youth culture in an effort to attract more and more youth into the church. However, this has had the unintended result of making churches emulate youth culture, both the good and the bad aspects of it. Most negatively is the immaturity that comes with youth culture (7). Again emotionalism seems to nurture and sustain this immaturity by encouraging us to rely on our emotions and depend on God for emotional stability.
- In my own experience the juvenilization of christianity has been most apparent in youth camps. Throughout high school I attended a youth camp called Zona, based at California Baptist University in Riverside. What I noticed was that almost every year is that while we were there we were encouraged not to discipline ourselves, not to seek strength from God to be responsible but rather to see God as our “daddy” who wishes to guide us through life as an emotional support. We were encouraged to evangelize, but to present the gospel as entering a wonderful relationship with Jesus Christ and definitely not as a set of ethical duties and obligations to God and other people as a result of what God has done for us. As a result we attained an emotional and spiritual high at the camp, but we could never maintain that high for more than a week afterwards. Even worse, even during camp drama and passionate arguments about “whose dating who” or some such nonsense filled the whole group. To suggest that this is the way the Christian life is meant to be lived makes absolutely no sense to me and I am ashamed by it honestly.
The Prosperity Gospel:
Many Christian leaders, especially in reformed circles have lamented the popularity of what has been termed; the prosperity gospel. Perhaps the best resource for dealing with this false gospel is John Piper. In this video Piper defines prosperity preaching as teaching that following God means growing in wealth and health. Piper rightly condemns this gospel as abominable. No reading of Jesus’ ministry, nor early church history in Acts, nor the theology of Paul in the Epistles can lead one to the conclusion that the gospel is meant to bring you wealth and health. Jesus was crucified, Stephen was stoned to death, Paul was stoned multiple times and many of the Apostles and Christian leaders were either beheaded or crucified. And yet this teaching has become quite prevalent in American churches. Numerous popular pastors promote this false theology; Joel Osteen, Bruce Wilkenson, Gordon Lindsay and Oral Roberts to name a few. All of these men have many tens of thousands of followers and numerous best selling books.
So what’s the connection here to emotionalism? If you read the justifications prosperity preachers employ they all have to do with God being with us always, desiring our emotional, physical and financial well-being. The focus, in other words is on you and God, nothing else. But if all that matters is that God loves us and died for us, it makes sense that He would want to give us the whole world! After all were His children right? Because emotionalism place our relationship with Christ as the center of Christianity, then as long as we teach that from the pulpit nothing else matters. Prosperity preaching is allowed to thrive in America because given an emotionalist framework, nothing about it seems obviously wrong. This raises a giant red flag to me, because if your understanding of God doesn’t see anything immediately absurd with the prosperity gospel, but scripture decries it at every turn then you know something is wrong with your understanding of God.
Radical Charismatic Movements:
If you ever get a chance watch the documentary “Jesus Camp”. Its about a fairly unsettling youth camp where charismatic pentacostle children are encouraged to speak in tongues, have intense emotional break downs and learn to fight satanic forces. Pastor John Macarther has argued that the Charismatic movement itself is the greatest source of heresy and false teachers in the Church today. While I don’t entirely agree with his central thesis, he does point out correctly that there are a great deal of radical Charismatic churches around the globe. Macarther argues that the Charismatic movement has been one of replacing thought with emotion and doctrine with experience. Charismatics tend to see passion as being best expressed in hyperactive worship, speaking wildly in tongues and violently combating inner spiritual forces.
One need only search “Benny Hinn” or “Jesus Only Pentecostals” on youtube to see that Macarther’s claims at least have some truth. The level of impulsiveness among many Charismatics is insane. Some Charismatic leaders have even been known to physically abuse members of their congregation for the sake of casting out demons or sinful forces from them. This further supports atheist claims that Christianity is nothing but “barking mad” and ludicrous. And clearly the direct cause of these problems is the belief that our emotions connect us to God and not our thoughts aka emotionalism.
The Decline in Civic Participation by Christians:
Robert Putnam, an eminent sociologist, brilliantly fleshed out the state of civic and communitarian participation in America throughout the 20th century in his book, “Bowling Alone”. In chapter 4, Putnam outlines findings of research on both religious participation and civic participation among the religious. He points out that in the first half of the 20th century religious institutions motivated civic engagement and improvement to an incredibly high degree, from the abolitionist movement to the civil rights movement, churches were the primary forces organizing social movements. As such it is tragic that in the second half of the 20th century civic engagement began to be detached from the Church. With the rise of both fundamentalism and evangelicalism civic engagement among churches began to decline. Why? Sociologists Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney explain it this way,
“Large numbers of young, well-educated, middle class youth… defected from the churches in the late sixties and the seventies… Some joined new religious movements, others sought personal enlightenment through various spiritual therapies and disciplines, but most simply “dropped out” of organized religion altogether… [The consequence was a] tendency toward highly individualized religious psychology without the benefits of strong supportive attachments to believing communities. A major impetus in this direction in the post-1960’s was the thrust toward greater personal fulfillment and quest for the ideal self… In this climate of expressive individualism, religion tends to become “privatized,” or more anchored in the personal realms” (8).
Thus our culture has equated religion with “spiritual therapy” or “the search for personal fulfillment” and the Church has largely bought into this seemingly innocuous delusion. Particularly evangelicals are less likely to engage social movements or volunteer in community organizations (such as food shelters, charities, political campaigns etc.) than mainline Protestants. Putnam writes,
“Most evangelical volunteering however supports the religious life of the congregation itself — teaching Sunday school, singing in the choir, ushering at worship services — but does not tend to extend to the broader community as much as volunteering members of other faiths” (8).
What’s worse is that mainline Protestantism is declining while Evangelical Christianity is increasing. this means that over all, civic participation among Christians is declining with a fair amount of speed. Why evangelical churches? As Robert Wuthnow, one of the worlds leading experts on the sociology of religion puts it, “whereas the mainline churches participated in progressive social betterment programs during the first half of the twentieth century, evangelical churches focused more on individual piety.” The Church is increasingly buying into the cultural delusion that Christianity is about a personal journey and not a convicting and transforming force in society.
The Decline in Church Attendance:
On top of the decline in civic participation among religious Americans there has also been a decline in the number of religiously active members in churches. Americans are still religious, but only privately so. Putnam writes,
“When they were in their twenties (in the 1960s and 1970s), boomers were more disaffected from religious institutions than their predecessors had been in their twenties. As the boomers married, had children and settled down they tended to become more involved with organized religion, just as their parents had, but the boomers began this life cycle move toward the church at a much lower level of religious involvement and have never closed the gap. Even now, in their forties and fifties, thought (as we would expect) more religious than they once were, boomers remain less religiously involved than middle-aged people were a generation ago” (8).
Putnam goes on to argue, and I think rightly, that the reason for this change is a more privatized faith where Christians move from congregation to congregation without much commitment to any single faith community. God knows I’m guilty of this. The consequence is a further retreat of the Church from society (8).
- The irony is that the evangelical church has bought in to the cultural caricature of Christianity so much that many evangelical writers have abandoned calling Christianity a religion altogether! Instead they opt to call Christianity a “relationship”. Unbeknownst to them, however, is that they are only making the problem worse! This has only deepened sentiments that Christianity is useful only for personal betterment and psychological well being. But why should someone be a Christian on this paradigm? After all, if I want to feel better about myself I can just go to a therapist, as many realized in the 60’s and 70’s the Church just isn’t necessary to achieve personal fulfillment regardless of how badly pastors want them to believe it.
There are a few more problems in the Church caused by emotionalism, but these are largely theological objections to the view I have as well as more speculative correlations I’ve drawn between emotionalism and the state of the Western Church today. I’ll be exploring these as well as what I believe to be a better way to approach ministry and simply define Christianity in a way that doesn’t concede the importance and worth of the Christian message to the surrounding culture.
Explicit examples of emotionalism in the Church;
- http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/more-undignified-than-this-joseph-neil-adams-sermon-on-worship-definition-117382.asp?Page=2; Becoming “undignified” through dancing and singing is assumed to parallel David’s dancing before the Lord and is an expression of passionate worship in contrast to dead worship.
- http://christianity.about.com/od/topicaldevotions/a/relationshipwithjesus.htm. Jesus is emotional, and has deep intimate feelings towards us. “The Holy Spirit unfolds scripture so that it becomes a love letter written specifically to you.”
- http://www.joycemeyer.org/articles/ea.aspx?article=a_real_relationship_with_god; "When we have a real relationship with God through Christ, life gets exciting because He stirs up a passion inside us to love people—and we don't have to struggle to do the things He calls us to do. It just happens naturally.”
- http://www.christianpost.com/news/letting-god-into-every-room-of-your-heart-99513/ "We need to do it because we love Him, honor Him and adore Him. Because if He's not comfortable, then we can't be comfortable. Do you ever experience a discomfort in your spirit? If so, ask yourself: Is there something in my life that's making God uncomfortable?”
- http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/i-am-a-friend-of-god-charlie-roberts-sermon-on-friend-of-god-179975.asp?Page=2 "God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, they were able to completely enjoy His divine presence. God’s desire for your life is to have that same kind of relationship with Him, that's why Jesus came to this earth, to provide the reconciliation God wanted to re-establish with His people! Amen? He wants you to not only to be able to walk in His presence, but also to able to experience His power in your life on a continual basis.”
- https://www.christianarmor.net/emotional-wholeness/18-emotional-dependence "If we are not emotionally dependent on Jesus Christ, then darkness can, and will, exploit our thoughts and feelings which will produce in us depression, defensiveness, anxiety, fear, frustration, apathy, insecurities, and many foolish habits."
Sources;
1. http://magazine.biola.edu/article/06-spring/the-feminization-of-the-church/
2. http://www.podles.org/church-impotent.htm
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
4.
5. http://www.biblicalresearchreports.com/seminaryeducation.php
6. Peter Boghossian; https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7096174.Peter_Boghossian. Examples of internet atheism; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO3MmmrUA4o, https://www.youtube.com/user/CultOfDusty, http://www.evilbible.com
7. http://www.wtsbooks.com/common/pdf_links/9780802866844.pdf
8. Putnam R.D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
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