there is the first draft of the first class.
this part is aiming at 45 min presentation, including a few minutes for each figure, which i haven't finished yet.
I'll be working the rest of the week to get the webpage up, i have 1 week to write each class. The actual teaching begins in 11 weeks. This is just the second time i've taught so i am still very new at the task.
workspace is at:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/rmwilliamsjr/150683.html
reading list is at:
http://www.dakotacom.net/~rmwillia/history of american presbyterianism.html
outline:
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class 1
I. overview of the class
purpose-
to study church history with the objective of understanding what God intends for us to learn in reference to the issue of today.
it is not an academic interest, or knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but preparation for answering the questions posed in the denomination today and tomorrow.
Introduction:
I'd like this class to be an interesting and enjoyable experience for everyone. I believe that the way to do this is to show how the details of our Church's history are not dry and arid facts about names and dates but rather it is alive in each of us here, as well as in the several million people in our country who call themselves Presbyterians. I take my main task to be a motivational one, how to interest each of us here today in the somewhat daunting task of studying "The History of American Presbyterianism".
Motivation of adults has one major principle- relevance and personal involvement. If i can show you how the debates of the last 300 years effect you today, or the struggles of people over these issues are your struggles as you walk today with Jesus, or how the forces that influenced them still influence and shape us; then my task is almost accomplished. For people are interested in their own lives, we live out our struggles in sleepless nights, we fight our battles with our dreams, hopes and passions. Well, today i am here to tell you that the debates we are going to label Old Side/New Side, Old Lights/New Lights, Old School/New School, the extraordinarily passionate debates about slavery that lead to the Civil War, that the ongoing battle between modernism and conservativism are in fact part of your identity as a Presbyterian and as a Christian. That these labels mark things of importance and relevance for each of us, the issue is how to present them in a way that does justice to the big issues while not getting bogged down so much in the details that everyone is overwhelmed with the facts and gives up on the whole learning process.
So the class is on three levels and you choose just how involved you want to be. The first and obvious level is the 12 hours we will spend together in this classroom, the second level is 60 page notebook i have printed up, the third is the webpages i've written for the class, there is a fourth level and that is the bibliography i wrote up as i did the reading for this study, but those who will follow it up--know what to do with book and reading lists. It is my intention in the class to concentrate on the issues and the big forces that appear to be involved in the crucial periods of Presbyterian history. I hope that in doing so, people will make the connections between the forces they experience as part of their Church and spiritual life and these forces we shall talk about.
Now if we were several miles west on Speedway at the University, the discussion of impersonal historical forces would end with them. Here, today, i am bound by no scientific or historist ideals but rather am informed by my faith that the world is not the arena of the impersonal but rather is the domain of a very personal and loving God. I am sure that over the next couple of months i will slip into the secular practice that i am familiar and comfort with and speak of forces as ultimate powers. But i do know better and hope to present history as the place that God works. These forces, say the desire to maintain a purity of the faith within the Church by monitoring and enforcing boundaries, are not just psychological or sociological ideas but rather are evidence of the finger of God working in our universe and in human history to accomplish His sovereign goals.
foundational
1. Big Ideas the students should come away with would include "how has God worked in the American Presbyterian Church down through the centuries?" and "What does that teach us today about where He may be leading us?" or "where we need to be careful not to go "again"?"
using history
1-to see God's hands at work
2-to learn the lessons that He has designed and taught to our forefathers for our benefit.
So the straightforward foundational principle for this class is to learn what God has to teach us concerning the nature of the Church by looking carefully at the history of the American Presbyterian Church. The reason is so that we can more intelligently engage in the discussions and battles of tomorrow.
Now, what are these big issues, these threads that run through history and help us both tie things together and to follow in the learning/studying process?
I have just two threads to work with during the entire class time: one-creedalism/confessionalism/subscriptionism and two-how the church reacts to and absorbs from the greater culture surrounding it. Both of these are questions of boundaries and the gates that are part of them. The easiest thing is to present these ideas first as diagrams, as pictures and explain what the different relationships represent.
figure one- venn diagrams: visible-invisible church, membership, elders, and TE boundaries. gates: into the visible church, into the session, ordination
the paper itself is the general culture, and this includes history, which we and every other person carries with us across the boundaries.
just two big issues:
creedalism/confessionalism/subscriptionism
the relationship of the church to the greater culture, especially in 3 areas: training of pastors, missions/evangelism, hermeneutics
The first issue, that i am going to try to refer to consistently as subscriptionism is almost totally a question of boundary drawing, gates creation and the subsequent enforcement of these lines and pores. I'm just going to outline the issue now, 1/2 of class 2 will be on this issue. It is a set of concentric circles, the first is the boundaries of the visible church, this is the issue of creedalism. The second is the boundary of the denomination or better understood as the boundaries around a small set of sister denominations- this is confessionalism. The third is the issue of gates, who draws them and who enforces them- this is the issue of subscriptionism. It is an ongoing debate in our church, it is my intention to inform on this question, to make everyone aware of all the issues, but it should be impossible to tell from my presentation in this class what my particular view is. My task here is to fairly present the acceptable viewpoints within the constraints of our Church positions, if you desire advice on how to personally 'come to grips' with one of the views as being more Scriptural please address those 'ought to' questions to our session or to our Pastor's.
The second major thread is the issue of how the greater culture is allowed to effect the practice and theology of the Church. This too is a boundary issue, what is allowed in from the outside, the complication is that the source of the ideas from the greater culture are from within us, from within the boundary of the Church. The problem of the outside culture is that it is within each of us, and the question is more what is expressed in public or as a matter of record, what becomes practice or acceptable theology. There are three fields where this issue arises most naturally and consistently through history: the education of pastor-teachers, the mission field and evangelism in general and in hermeneutics. I plan to tackle each of these as they first make a strong appearance in history, basically to inductively see how the forces of enculturation or cultural opposition are evident in the debates we will study. But the big motif will be how the church reacts to culture, either accepting it uncritically(encultural capitulation), fighting it as a dangerous outside force (opposition or withdrawal) or striving for some kind of competitive pluralism (cultural transformation), these 3 being the extremes in the discussion, most efforts in the past have been mixtures of all 3 in varying portions. We will start with the details next week with the Old/New Side division as a reaction to new techniques of evangelism imported from outside of the church.
My wife, being my greatest critic, tells me that my best teaching is when i present pictures for illustration and remembrance. So at this point i want to introduce the motif of the train, which will be the controlling illustration for the entire class.
figure 2 the train
First, look at the tracks. It is trying to capture the strong determinism that is evident in Calvinism. A competing image would be the days that i owned a Jeep and went driving out in the country, no roads, just fields and trees, i could go anywhere i desired. To the contrary, a train travels on tracks, the engineers of our train, despite their own protestations that they are controlling the direction and fate of the Church, are on God's train tracks. God knows where and is, through very special providence, controlling the train. Now the scenery is new to the occupents of the train, they have never travelled this way before, but this fact that they are driving the train doesn't mean that they are really in charge. They can determine how fast or where to stop, but the really big issue of where are we going is truely in God's hands, and i wish to capture this with railroad tracks not the metaphor of a jeep trail.
Second, the people in the engine are us, our session, the theologians alive and writing the books we read, the position papers of the denomination, last years General Assembly etc., the active living Church as we see her today. The cars behind are the big issues we are going to cover in the class, the last car is the oldest, back to the mid 1700. Imagine that periodically the train pulls over and a new car is inserted between the engine and the rest of the train, then the current engineers retire to it and a new generation takes over the engine cab. As we discuss things in the cab we can walk back through the train, but we start at the last car, this is the immedate past. We can continue through the cars, but our visit to the further cars always starts with the first car. History is learned from our present backwards. Even though this class starts at the beginning and works towards our time, the natural way we understand things is the other way- present to immediate past to more remote. I am trying to capture this essential insight by seeing that the conversations we have with the past are always colored from the nearby first. I actually thought seriously about teaching in this order, from today backwards, but it poses some other foundational issues that are better solved in presenting history in our usual order- older to newer. The newer often hides the issues in too much complexity for beginning out, the past in many ways is easily and simpler from older to us as a learning technique.
The train cars are, from caboose to engine: Old/New Side, Presbygation-Ecumenism, Old/New School, slavery, modernism/progressiveism/liberalism vs conservative, the caboose is European Calvinism and the engine is the handful of sister denominations: OPC, PCA, EvP, CRC, ARP, but not the mainline PCUS.
old/new side
point: intellectualism vs experientalism, membership admission requirements
presbygation-1801 reunion --ecumenism
point: disestablished churches competing for market share, pastor education requirements, numbers as a criteria of success, broad churchism vs narrow doctrinal
old school/new school
point: pietism, relationship of church to new techniques, evangelism as numerial goal
slavery
point: moral authority, adiaphoia, relationship of institutional church to its own power centers, relationship of theology to greater cultural forces
modernism/liberalism/progressive
point: 3 way battle in church, what is liberal theology?, who defines the boundaries and polices/enforces them?, does doctrine matter? relationship of science to theology.
I have one more image, metaphor, controlling picture i'd like to introduce. It is the image of 3 big suma wrestlers, playing an odd 3 way tug of war, image the boxing ring ropes and the poles as big guys pushing outwards to make their area longer. The 3 guys are trying to capture the insight that the battle is not a polarized into 2 opposites one, but rather is a 3 way tug of war. The issues are taken directly from our elders and members confessions/oaths: peace, purity and unity of the church.
figure 3 3 way tug of war over peace, purity and unity of the visible church. (1)
The truth is that God intents for us to honor all 3 of these ideals, something like a equilateral triangle. But because of our perspectives we tend to accent one or the other and thus deform the triangle. The same thing happens historically, sometimes one or the other, sometimes 2 big guys gang up on one and deform the triangle that way. What i am trying to understand is that the issues are seldom clearly two opposing opposites with every doctrine and ideal in opposition- a radical polarization. But rather often times this is a problem of properly framing the debate, and if i keep all three in mind i find myself much better able to understand the debate and the issues near and dear to the participants. Looking at the issues this way helps to avoid the either-or thinking that seems to frame too much of the debates in church history.
Well, this appears to be about 45 minutes worth of material. That will be my objective for the class discussions, leaving 10 minutes for questions routinely on each Sunday.
figure 4 chart of American Presbyterian denominations
footnotes to lecture 1:
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(1)--->
stimulus:
I've been thinking about a metaphor or a mental image to try to capture the major pieces of Presbyterian church history for the class.
It seems that (again) a triad is appropriate:
peace---purity---unity
the image i have is of 3 strong men, each at the corner of this triangle, playing a 3-way tug of war.
as the strength of one deforms the triangle it can only be at the expense of the other corners, the triangle has a fixed perimeter.
at different times in church history, for various reasons, one of the corners is ascendent. Efforts are concentrated there, people are aware and eager to promote that apex. For instance, much of the Machen era was dominated by a desire for peace, even at the expense of purity. Unity was the key element with the union of 1801 or purity at the expense of peace in 1861.
The interesting thing is that they are all important, if you concentrate on one to the exclusion of another, you loose balance and perspective.
It is a lot like the image of a swinging pedulum, over reaction then followed by over compensation in the other direction.
Applying it to the issue of subscriptionism, each element of which is directed at one of the corners.
peace at the ability to take exceptions-avoids minor side disputations/divisive spirit, purity that all TE's subscribe-doctrinal consensus, unity in application of discipline-enforcement.
i can image something like a colored barbers pole, the colors and the brightness of each change over time, like the emphasis in the church seems to move from one corner to another, often in response to changing cultural influences.
seems like a decent motif.
online research notes:
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version:
date Wed March 9 16:11
first draft, class lecture notes
for a recommendation.