I have just returned from my first SPS annual meeting. As a newbie, I was less than impressed. Rats! There goes the tension spring in another understatement meter; I should buy those by the dozen.
The diatribe comes below, but first, let me briefly explain “Reception History,” which is itself a character in my narrative. It is not merely present in this organization when it is the conference focus, but is a major thrust in the vision of those in control of the Society of Pentecostal Studies.
Reception History is presented as a way of unpacking the dynamic between individuals in community as they wrestle together with Scripture. This includes Scripture’s use of Scripture. So far, so good; it’s doesn’t appear any different than what Kenneth Bailey does in his book, The Good Shepherd: The 1000 year journey from Psalm 23 to the New Testament.
In practice, however, many at the conference couldn’t distinguish use from interpretation. Having a shallow understanding of biblical intertextuality, several scoffed that “since the New Testament writers didn’t care about original context, we shouldn’t either.”
They are wrong on both points.
Reception history might also be applied to… let’s say, a study of how early African American Pentecostal leaders dealt with Paul’s commands for social order between husbands, wives, children, slave owners and slaves in the face of how former American slave masters used those same texts (first Plenary session).
Again, as an historical discipline, this is not necessarily a problem. In practice, however, as witnessed, it has tended to excuse highly selective and prejudicial historical analysis by freeing practitioners from any sense of ethical responsibility to understand and present broader cause-effect contexts. Most had an axe to grind and preached a specific shared narrative that will be discussed below.
Because Reception Historians strive to give a “voice” to certain groups, understanding reality (which they would deem beyond reach and unworthy even as a goal) seems low on their value scale. Perception is reality, it appears, so long as that perception is coming from the “right” people. You find little to no investigations like one might discover in the works of one of my own literary mentors, African American economist and social theorist, Thomas Sowell in his books, The Economics and Politics of Race (1983), Ethnic America (1981), Affirmative Action Around the World (2004), Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005), Intellectuals and Race (2013), and Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective (2016), et al.
So, again, as an historical discipline, how people use texts is a perfectly legitimate path of inquiry and can be enlightening. The trouble with Reception History, especially as its older, classically-trained proponents give way to millennial and post-millennial disciples is that it seriously de-emphasizes the Scriptures in context and undermines the desire to understand the text as an act of inspired communication: an author, carried along by the Holy Spirit, writing as a fully engaged participant in the communication act, using the appropriate contextually-defined symbols to convey the divine “cognition” to the originally intended audience. (I’ve just given Reception practitioners all the niggling, philosophically-spun fodder they’ll need for rejecting everything else I say hereafter… though I have a sense that I’d get the same results from saying, “My! Isn’t the sky a lovely shade of blue today.)
The problems deepen, when those promoting this method have tied it to certain socio-religious politics and a penchant for progressive & liberation ideology in race, gender, & economics. It is this that stood out most to me as I moved about the conference like a pudgy, bald, bespectacled fly on the wall.
The global community is in the midst of the greatest carefully crafted cultural revolution since Christianity drove paganism from the world stage, and this group, by and large, seems to have thrown their hat in the ring with the anti-white, anti-Western, anti-American, anti-male/anti-masculine, and yes, anti-Christian & anti-biblical program driven by atheists and God haters. When, according to your claim, “what the Spirit is saying to the churches” ends up being little more than a reverberation of what the spirit of the age has been promoting for decades in the mainstream narrative of leftist dominated media and Hollywood, you need to seriously question yourself.
Unfortunately, self-evaluation is difficult at the best of times and their Reception History model insulates them from the prophetic power of Scripture—The Sword of the Spirit. They have, as I’ve witnessed it, hollowed out Scripture and made it little more than an echo chamber for their own feelings, concerns, and ambitions, as the beat of their intellectually insecure hearts seems little more than the pitter patter of their little academic feet toddling after the approval of the secular academy… all the while securing themselves from the correction of the church, and especially from evangelicals through the creation of a self-admiration society that ridicules traditional doctrines of Scripture in favor of a “living Bible.” They have made themselves masters of the text and set themselves beyond its reach through their own self-talk.
I am almost at a loss for words to describe what I experienced; no worries though, mine isn’t one of the voices with which they concern themselves. I’m merely the voice of the white patriarchy ringing from the “unbearable past.” Even so, I know that I was not the only one who was appalled by the mood; I attended one session that was critical of the method, but these presenters were silent when attending sessions that can only be described as blaspheme of the first order, like one applauded paper claiming that John reveals a Jesus who envisioned a world without gender. I also had two conversations where the other attender quietly, and with trepidation, making sure not to be overheard, expressed their own concern.
If what I witnessed at SPS is the future of American Pentecostalism, we are a dead movement walking.
As noted, in Reception History these practitioners are primarily interested in what they regard as the unheard, or underrepresented, voices… though their open support for the Democratic Party Platform, would question whether they even pause over their candidates’ support for abortion, and their present celebration of passing laws to promote undisguised infanticide… the ultimate unheard voice. Many mocked Trump and Republicans, including some of the presenters. I listened as one African American man had a near mental breakdown over Trump’s immoral past, but I heard not a whisper of people who were outraged at these recent murderous developments. This man bemoaned with a good deal of venom, “I knew that we would never have racial reconciliation, when white people elected that immoral racist as president.” Now, I don’t like Trump as a person and, as a president, have concerns about his commitment to the Constitution and to natural rights, but this gentleman, did not seem concerned in the least that the alternative to Trump was a woman with a long history of corruption and immorality herself, who had complicity in silencing those who raised rape accusations against her husband, who clapped and laughed for legislation passed to expand the murder of upwards of half the children who would otherwise be born into his own community,[1] and whose primary political agenda involves the dissolution of natural rights in favor of goods and service rights—the de-incentivizing of global production and prosperity and the reorientation of all rights toward government and away from innate personhood. He, unlike the intimidated two above, had no fear of loudly tarring Caucasians with accusations of racism for their failure to vote the democrats back into power. Of course, he had no need to fear; the SPS’s interest in underrepresented voices comes down to a promotion of identity politics, and by that measure he can do no wrong. Factual accuracy has little place in identity politics… only legitimizing certain group feelings matters… which is exactly how they implement their reception history model.
In these commitments, the Reception History advocates that I encountered promote the agendas of those who redefine biblical equality (equality of personhood as image bearer) into a cry for a forced equality of outcome. Indeed, I watched one scholar acknowledge the Imago Dei as the rule and then demand equality of outcome as its only legitimate application. This entailed a rejection of natural gender paradigms as haphazard “social constructs” and, thus, calls for the dissolution of all social roles. It is not permitted to even entertain the notion that God made males and females uniquely gifted and both “inclined toward” and more “actualized in” certain functions.
In these commitments, the Reception History advocates that I encountered promote the agendas of those who redefine biblical justice (the vicious defense and retribution surrounding natural rights and their violation) into something called social justice, where all inequality of outcome (for special mascot groups) is unquestionably blamed on prejudice, discrimination, racism and the patriarchy.[2] They blame systems outside these “victim” groups for variations in practical results and will not tolerate any voice that rises to question these assumptions. They demand systematic and legislative change to force equality of outcome regardless of unequal values, effort, desire, actions, skill, and both cultural &gender inclination.
In these commitments, the Reception History advocates that I encountered promote the agendas of those who advocate the ideologies of multi-culturalism, which is not, as the name tries to suggest, the mere acceptance of the reality of multiple cultures in the world or in any given geographical location, but is, rather, an anti-Western vision for how cultural conflicts should be interpreted. There are other visions that prove more historically accurate, more practical and more productive for all, but those advocating this multicultural socio-economic politic tend to function at a low level of cultural awareness and cross-cultural skill. Those of the Western tradition usually embrace the virtue signaling of reversalism, where one’s confrontation of innate tensions between those of diverse cultural groups is turned into a hostility against one’s own group. Those who are not part of the Western tradition usually embrace open hostility toward, and a sense of disenfranchisement from, the Western world, blaming the varied cultural outcomes of non-Western societies on the West as an oppressive “colonizing” obstacle to the recognition of their own personhood and their own culture’s legitimacy. Non-Western cultures, it is claimed, lag behind BECAUSE of Western Cultures. Multiculturalism is an immature vision of cultures as equally valid and sacrosanct, rather than as highly fallible, open to criticism and merely human social mechanisms that evolved in specific contexts to sustain survival in the face of particular threats and based on a combination of ideas about the nature of God, humanity, and reality. In multiculturalism every culture is a precious artifact to be honored and preserved… except Western cultures which need to be deconstructed and discarded. It disavows one of the most basic cultural realities—cultures have consequences.
In a combination of these three unhealthy commitments, the Reception History advocates that I have encountered preach and promote the least productive self-talk a person or community can embrace—victimhood. They divide the world into warring factions (in the name of seeking unity and peace), dis-enfranchise the productive (in the name of helping the poor). They seek to build people’s mental framework around envy & jealousy, guilt & accusation, reparations & an expectation for giving or receiving artificial “propping up” (all in the name of seeking equality). Their daily bread is the advocation of
(1) unmerited opportunity (which undermines the most competent and short-sheets general prosperity),
(2) unearned financial support (which promotes indolence),
(3) giving or receiving a free pass on personal responsibility, moral obligations and adult social expectations (which is itself a racist vision of non-Caucasian groups as children in need of constant care and special accommodations), and
(4) by attaching innate virtue to those having “underdog” social labels (which disavows all biblical values of moral and ethical judgment).
Pity replaces standards, order and discipleship. The higher Christian virtues of the fruit of the Spirit are sidelined. The call to mercy, grace and forgiveness fades away. That most glorious of Christian virtues—prospering spiritually in the face of suffering and oppression—is exchanged for shallow minded activism, constant bleating, and sweeping condemnation of straw man enemies.
The bulk of their energy, as is the case with most academics whose connection with real world consequences is weak, seems to be taken up with virtue signaling. Virtue signaling often involves little more than repeating, (and applauding those who repeat) “popular” narratives about the nature of the world in terms of victims and villains— cultural Marxism. In so doing, the elite-minded elevate their concern for some cherished victims above all other Christian virtues. Hence, they support the party of infanticide, who booed God from the platform, because it also promotes their much greater concern for race, gender and economic issues as defined above. They have absolutely no concern for those who are victimized by their cherished victim groups. Naturally, real world cause-effects, and long-range outcomes have no part in virtue signaling, which is primarily concerned not with the results of activism, but with how activism makes them feel about themselves. They are convinced that “meaning well” must mean “doing well.”
They are sadly mistaken.
At its core, these commitments are the result of either a wholly unbiblical worldview, or the common failure to logically apply a biblical worldview beyond the emotional impulse of wanting to help certain people. Helping “the less fortunate,” however, is much harder to do well than mere virtue signalers imagine; it requires concentrated effort to develop a realistic and practical understanding of the nature of the world as God made it and as men and women twisted it, and of the shared nature of every human being, whose collective and individual sin is the source of all social ills. These are ills that cannot be fixed this side of eternity, but merely ameliorated by the prophetic promotion of divine order (Proverbs 29:19). Both failings are properly addressed through a careful construction of biblical answers to the primary questions of reality—Where did we come from? What’s wrong with the world? How can it be fixed?—none of which are properly answered in the socio-religious politics rooted in an unlimited view of humanity to which Reception Historians, as I have encountered them, have committed themselves.
Now, in case you lost track during my diatribe, you must remember that I was not at a democratic convention, nor a rally of the Socialists of America… I did not stumbled into a board meeting for Google or an after party for the Oscars. I was at an academic gathering of Pentecostal Christians… those teaching and administrating our Pentecostal Bible Schools, colleges, and Universities… those teaching our future pastors… those training our missionaries.
As a 34 year veteran of the academic world of our “Christian” institutions, I can tell you that, though I’m glad there were exceptions, very little that I heard was born from the prophetic power of inspired Word. No, these reception scholars are too intellectually astute to let themselves be limited by such antiquated notions of authorial intent in the inspired authors of Scripture… too plugged into the community of the Spirit to need that kind of mooring… too superior to Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, John, Paul and even Jesus Himself as represented by His Apostles to need a biblical anchor for their souls and minds.
To be empowered from on high, is, first and foremost, to be an instrument for divine Word, which is consistent from of old because it is poured forth from an immutable, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, all-wise God. Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; lament, O ministers of my God!
[1] Nearly 50% in 2000, and 27% in 2014 according to one study. Rates in the inner city are higher than outside it. https://www.guttmacher.org/infographic/2017/abortion-rates-race-and-ethnicity
[2] Camille Paglia
