Mistreating History
The Reformed Reader quotes Carl Trueman's 2008 book, The Minority Report, on the two "disempowering" ways that churches approach history: An idolatry of the new and the novel, with the concomitant disrespect for anything traditional; or a nostalgia for the past which is little more than an idolatry of the old and the traditional. Both are disempowering: the first leaves the church as a free-floating anarchic entity which is doomed to reinvent Christianity anew every Sunday, and prone to being subverted and taken over by any charismatic (in the non-theological sense!) leader or group which cares to flex its muscle; the second leaves the church bound to the past as its leaders care to write that past and thus unable to engage critically with her own tradition. (h/t to Chris Armstrong at Grateful To The Dead)
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The Reformed Reader quotes Carl Trueman’s 2008 book, The Minority Report, on the two “disempowering” ways that churches approach history:
An idolatry of the new and the novel, with the concomitant disrespect for anything traditional; or a nostalgia for the past which is little more than an idolatry of the old and the traditional. Both are disempowering: the first leaves the church as a free-floating anarchic entity which is doomed to reinvent Christianity anew every Sunday, and prone to being subverted and taken over by any charismatic (in the non-theological sense!) leader or group which cares to flex its muscle; the second leaves the church bound to the past as its leaders care to write that past and thus unable to engage critically with her own tradition.
(h/t to Chris Armstrong at Grateful To The Dead)