Thursday, December 07, 2006

Lawson Gives State of the Movement Message

Gentle readers who align as Campbellites will certainly know that when LeRoy Lawson offers an article entitled, "The Restoration Movement: Its Vitality, Quirks, and Needs in the 21st Century," that article should be read. We affirm it as the clearest assessment that we've read in awhile, and we commend the good editor and staff of the Christian Standard for inviting Roy to write it.

Here's a tantalizing quotation, which is how the artful Lawson ends:

FORGET about respectability—We have attained it. Now we can forget about it. More important than reputation is relevance—not relevance to the religious world, because that is one of our attainments, but relevance to the nonreligious, the pre-Christian, multicultural world to which we have been sent. That means judging our progress or lack of it not by our standing among Christians, but by our reception among those who have not yet heard and heeded the Word.

4 comments:

steve-o said...

Even more telling, I believe, was this quote, under the heading of "Still basically anti-intellectual":

"We participate in the general 'dumbing down' of America, even though our founders treasured learning and established academic institutions and understood the difference between training and education."

I think Lawson nailed it. We've sold out our depth in order to claim respectability. Hopefully we'll realize the error of our ways.

Unknown said...

Artful? Is this really how you want to describe this piece?

Jon A. Alfred E. Michael J. Wile E. SWNID said...

Yes, artful. Lawson says an awful lot with precious few words. One might argue that succinct wisdom is more craft than art, but I didn't want to call him "crafty."

I actually don't think that the movement was ever intellectual. The founders started academic institutions, but not with the intellectual aspirations that a lot of other Protestants demonstrated, and certainly without their attainments (Bethany College?). So I'll quibble with Steve-O's choice of what's choice, but only a little.

steve-o said...

I totally agree that we were never an intellectual movement, trying to attain to academic recognition like Ivy League-type schools, but I find it disturbing that it's still a part of our present. I think that's what Lawson is noting here: that our churches lack depth and are totally OK with that.

My comments were meant to note that the legacy of our anti-intellectualism will negatively affect our future.

In an information age, ignorance isn't a good place to be found in.