1- Do something which angers the powers that be like eating a sausage at Lent or discounting the Church’s teachings on indulgences.
2- Write. A lot. About every doctrine under the sun.
3- Have friends in high political places.
4- Stir the masses to agree with you by poking fun at the established Church.
5- Be willing to ‘take it on the chin’ and accept contempt.
6- Be willing to make people mad.
7- Be willing to stand by while your enemies are pilloried and if necessary executed.
That’s what it takes to be a Reformer. You have to have conviction yoked to courage and a fearlessness which blinds you to the glowering, infuriated glances of your ’superiors’. If you have the guts for it, you can be a Reformer too. And then you can be the hinge upon which swings a new theological revolution.
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Its Jerry Falwell!
Ok I’ll pretend you didn’t say that and overlook the fact that none of the above applies in any respect to Falwell!
1- Do something which angers the powers that be - like calling HIV/Aids a judgement from God?
2- Write. A lot. About every doctrine under the sun. Okay, this is out.
3- Have friends in high political places. I think so.
4- Stir the masses to agree with you by poking fun at the established Church. Well, he di work hard at punching holes in non-fundamentalist churches.
5- Be willing to ‘take it on the chin’ and accept contempt. I think Jerry knew well th he had his ‘cultured despisers’.
6- Be willing to make people mad. That’s a cert.
7- Be willing to stand by while your enemies are pilloried and if necessary executed. Mmmm…
I think what you are talking about in the Reformation here is something every fundamentalist aspires too. I don’t count myself one, but it seems everyone today who actually makes some kind of public confession that actually has some ‘conviction’ behind it actualy is a fundamentalist.
The problem I find is that, as with the reformers, the effort behind so much conviction is to attempt to reform from the top down - thereby forcing everyone to follow our convictions. Perhaps we need to start from the bottom and work our way up instead.
Having live my whole life in Northern Ireland and experienced the worst of conviction politics and faith, perhaps instead, we actually having to sincerely love people. To love them enough to have your convictions tramped in the ground several times, and letting the proof of our convictions be experienced in our own lives instead of forcing them on others. A more ‘Christian way?
However what separates Falwell from the Reformers was that he was an idiot and they were anything but.
Its amazing what hindsight can do - yet I’m sure Luther’s Pope might disagree. Perhaps in 200 years Jerry Falwell will be remembered, while Rudolph Buultmann will not.
Heck I don’t even know who ‘Rudolph Buultman’ is now! I do, however, know Rudolf Bultmann. And I’m more than confident that he will be remembered while Falwell will be nothing more than a burp on the barstool.
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