The Roots Run Deep: Non-Anxious Theology in an Anxious Age

The way theological conversations are unfolding in my tradition these days calls for a non-anxious presence. Usually, anxiety shows up in organizations amid rapid social change, and that’s precisely what we are encountering now. American culture is experiencing more extreme culture shifts more rapidly than it has ever seen before, and I can see the church being swept up in it. This is a moment that calls for doing theology non-anxiously, not by falling for false alternatives that present a quick fix to our social instability, but by rooting deeply into the gift of our tradition.

A Tale of Two Emails

Two messages came in on the same day, both raising questions about a clergy education program I helped develop. The first email raised questions about nearly every textbook in the program. Though there were no direct engagements with the content of the books themselves, the email’s author was suspicious because ‘I’ve heard so and so believes such and such.’ (Every one of the books had undergone a theological review by a committee before publication, but I don’t think the email’s writer knew that.)

The other email asked for theological clarification on a word used in a course he didn’t know. It was a word he wasn’t sure he wanted to use because it carried a connotation that he thought contradicted our tradition. He pointed to several specific examples in our tradition in which theologians had worked on that word.

I can’t speak for the motivations of each person who wrote those emails, but reading them back-to-back gave me an opportunity to reflect on the theological dynamics we’re living in today. It’s never a problem to field questions and offer clarification to notes like this, but one struck me as being very anxious, while the other seemed to be seeking clarification by rooting more deeply into our theological tradition. It was, for me, a microcosm of the larger theological conversation and the motivations undergirding it.

Non-Anxious Examples

This isn’t the first time we have encountered these dynamics, and there are non-anxious examples who have guided us previously. A ’non-anxious presence’ is a description of a pastor I heard in my early days of ministry. Pastors, I quickly learned, are called to step into crisis situations where change is happening quickly, most of which are laden with anxiety. The way a pastor shows up can make all the difference in a situation. You can add to the anxiety, becoming consumed by a frantic attempt to stem the change and bring the situation under control, or you can take account of the situation, look for the ways God’s presence is showing up in the situation, and give yourself more to God’s presence than anxiety, quietly inviting others to join you in that posture.

Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, a predecessor of mine in teaching theology at Trevecca, is one of the northern stars of non-anxious theology for me. Though she passed away before I knew what theology was, she has become an example to me of ‘showing up’ in the theological room as a non-anxious presence.

While Wynkoop was a professor at Trevecca, American culture was staggering through a massive social change as the Boomers began to question the virtue of social conformity that characterized their parents. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing, images of a faraway war filled American television screens each evening, and women were staking our new roles at home and in the workplace. In short, things were changing, and they were changing quickly. Of course, that will create anxiety, and of course, this is going to shape the way theology gets done.

Two Approaches

A simple (though not entirely complete) way to narrate the church’s response to rapid social change was to gravitate toward theological programs that offered a quick sense of stability amid social disorientation. In Wynkoop’s (and my) denomination, a group began to form around a brand of theology that sought to name the sins of the age decisively and distance itself from them. I call this the ‘get the sin out!’ approach. It tends to be primarily motivated by ridding ourselves and our society of sin. It generally looks to extract problems, resulting in a ‘pure’ state.

Wynkoop, instead, turned toward a deep well of theological resource that had largely been forgotten in Nazarene circles. She started reading the works of John Wesley and discovered how the tree of Wesleyan theology was nourished by roots sunk deep into the Old and New Testaments. What she pointed toward was a theology that was like a slow-growing oak that had been growing for generations and was now leafing anew for an anxious generation. It’s an approach that I call, ‘fill our hearts with love,’ entirely dependent upon a vital and intimate relationship with God. Wesley used the more archaic phrase, ‘love excluding sin.’ Its primary motivation is intimacy with God; the secondary reality is that it changes our motivation away from ungodly behaviors because we don’t want to do things that harm the relationship with the One we love.

There are other places for a theological evaluation of the two approaches I’ve outlined in more detail. Here, I’m simply offering the observation that theology can be done non-anxiously and calling for us to adopt the wisdom of our ancestors who have embraced a non-anxious presence. We are, as they were, thrust into a time of rapid social change, and it is creating anxiety, making ‘get the sin out!’ approaches an attractive harbor for those seeking a bit of social stability. These approaches have often been the well-intentioned pathway to legalism; we tried as hard as we could to rid sin from ourselves and the world around us, and found that journey never could result in true freedom from sin. I wonder, though, if these approaches are attractive precisely because they offer a kind of silent promise: ‘As long as you can control sin, you can control the chaos. Trying hard to control sin is how you’ll cure your anxiety.’

Such anxiety may even make other approaches appear less trustworthy and deserving of critique. That is, at some level, what Wynkoop endured. A host of pastors and theologians classified her as being soft on sin, when, in fact, a careful reading of A Theology of Love offers a lively description of how a person can be free from the power of sin. That freedom, she argues, is rooted in the love of God and neighbor, filling and directing the inner motivations of humans. What A Theology of Love doesn’t do is offer a quick solution for anxiety by pronouncing the need for control over sin or social change. To my reading, A Theology of Love only works when you have an enduring sense that God is actively working in the world, and that because of God’s activity, it isn’t up to you to expel sin; our role is to be filled with love because we are primarily motivated to be intimate with God, and the displacement of sin will be the natural result.

In my estimation, we are facing a situation similar to what Wynkoop faced. Some of us are anxious about rapid social change and our theological conversation is showing the marks of a people anxiously searching for a resting place. We would do well, then, to learn not only from the content of Wynkoop's theology but also from her example of carefully and consistently evaluating whether our theology trusts in God’s gracious activity or is caught up in an anxious search for home. “She always wanted to be sure she was getting it right,” one of her former students told me. That care, I think, is why her theology eventually carried the day, and the church did not bound headlong toward a legalistic false home.

Social change is picking up, anxiety is on the rise, and legalism still looks like a more efficient strategy than love. In the coming years, it will look more attractive to those whose anxious souls are seeking rest. The problem is that legalism can never be a true home for God’s people. It may offer a feeling of security amid social instability, but intimacy with God is not only the hope of holiness, but also the only resting place for our anxious hearts. We are going to need theologians who continue to help us root into the goodness of our tradition and let it blossom for a new generation. We are also going to need to be aware of when we are anxiously reacting to rapid social change and when we are resting in the goodness of divine activity. The good news: the oak is still growing, and the roots are still deep.

(I'm currently working on a new book called Coming Home: Theological Formation for an Anxious Age. If you'd like to know when it's available or see an advance copy, you can sign up here.)

The Work of Discipleship in a Christian University

Here are a few phrases I’ve often used that I’m now trying to work out of my vocabulary: “…a foot in both worlds.” “…bridging the gap between church and university.” It’s not that my passion for those kinds of things is waning; it’s more that I think those kinds of phrases have already caught me up in a false dichotomy, especially if we are talking about a Christian university. The heart of the problem I see in phrases like that is thinking of the church and the university as two entities, divergent in their missions.

Distinctly Christian universities don’t stand apart from the church; they are a part of the church. To appeal to Paul’s provocative metaphor, a Christian university is a part of the body of Christ with a distinctive function, but still part of the body, like any part of our own bodies (1 Cor. 12, Rom. 12). Phrases like the ones I’ve named above are a bit like saying, ‘I stand at the intersection between my shoulder and my lung, trying to hold the two together.’

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been developing a bit of a thought experiment called What If Christian University, or WICU for short. Basically, it asks, ‘What if…’ regarding many aspects of life at a Christian university, appreciating what has been and considering what might be possible. Today, though, I’m considering this: What if the Christian university really was understood as a part of the body of Christ? How would that shape the way we do our work? How would that change the kinds of conversations happening among church and university leaders? How would it shape what happens in the classroom?

I’m limiting myself to this brief claim today, because I have a lot of work to do for a Christian university that isn’t a thought experiment: Christ as the head of the body unifies the work of discipleship.

Christ as the Head of the Body

“He is the head of the body, the church,” we read in Colossians 1. Paul’s employment of the body metaphor spans several of his letters, but here we gain insight into how the body of Christ works. As the head of the body, Christ unites the parts of the body. That is, like our own bodies, the parts function together when they are united by the head.

This carries implications for those like me who work at a Christian university, pursuing truth and inviting students to join us in that quest. Here I have in mind an image of Jesus walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. They were walking together, learning as they went (I love that Jesus is a teacher), and guided by Jesus. That didn’t mean they didn’t walk into difficult situations or ask difficult questions. Following Jesus tends to mean you’re probably headed into places where life isn’t neat or tidy, and the pursuit of the truth rubs against the status quo uncomfortably. The disciples, though, followed Jesus as the ‘head’ of their metaphorical body, and it united them in their mission. Were there disagreements among them? Certainly! They were all committed, however, to following Jesus.

What if those of us who render our service at Christian higher ed institutions saw ourselves like that? What if we understood ourselves primarily as those who are following Jesus, our head, who unites the parts of the body? How might that shape the way I approach my work or manage disagreements with colleagues?

The head of the body, too, unifies the parts of the body so that they function together, and if Christ is the head of the body, I have to pay attention to the way my work is unified by the head. I am not disconnected from the head, severed from the body of Christ. This is the kind of work that calls me to be connected to Christ, the head of the body, and follow him as a disciple into the thorniest of questions and situations.

The Work of Discipleship

If my work is to stay connected to the head and follow Christ as a disciple, the work of Christian higher ed is also rooted in discipleship. As a distinctly Christian university, that also means that the university participates in the mission of the church by making disciples. What does that mean for education? It means that Christian universities are called to educate as discipleship, and that’s precisely what makes the work joyful and enlivening!

I have in mind here another discipleship scene: Jesus approaches Peter on the lakeshore and asks him to follow, telling him, “I will make you fish for people” (Matt. 4:19). Two things are functioning here: acquisition of skills and a vision for how to use those skills.

Part of education involves the acquisition of skill, whether that be in researching, writing, coding software, or taking vital signs. We need to be careful, though, to not reduce education to acquiring skill. Education also involves casting a vision for how those skills will be used.

Jesus is speaking to those who have acquired job skills as fishermen, but he wants to reorient those skills toward the purposes of the kingdom he is bringing. That, to me, is a large part of the work we do at Christian universities. These institutions are the part of the body of Christ that not only equip students with skills but also offer them a vision of how those skills can be used according to Christ’s kingdom. We disciple aspiring educators, business professionals, medical professionals, social workers, etc. to use their skills in a way that participate in God’s work of making all things new. What a joy!

Christ’s headship and the work of discipleship remind us that the church and the Christian university are not two separate entities with two separate missions. “For just as each of us has one body with many members,” Paul wrote to the Romans, “and these members have different functions, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Rom. 12:4-5).

Evangelicals and the Will to Power

I begin with this confession: I'm tempted by the will to power. 

It’s Lent—a season for giving special attention to the direction of our lives and for course-correcting where we’ve drifted. Practicing Lent may be new, misunderstood, or even rejected by evangelicals, but I’ve found it deeply helpful as I “turn my face toward the cross,” asking what needs to be crucified so that new creation can be raised to life. This year, it feels especially worth considering whether being motivated by what I’ll call the will to power is a course that needs correcting.

By “the will to power,” I mean a moral instinct many of us recognize: the belief that if something good is going to happen in the world, it’s up to us to seize it, fight for it, and make it so. If you want the world to be a certain way, you need to exert yourself and battle for it. This instinct—the sense that our values require champions who will not only represent them but conquer in their name—is, I think, a defining spirit among my evangelical brothers and sisters in this decade (though it has been around far longer). It is a moral vision that has gripped the theological imagination of American evangelicals.

What often goes unnoticed, however, is that this vision did not originate in the church. In fact, it closely mirrors a moral framework most famously articulated by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

There are a few things many American evangelicals may know about Nietzsche:

1)    He had a wild mustache; and

2)   We don’t like him because he’s the guy who said “God is dead.”

What we may not recognize is just how much of his playbook we’ve absorbed—often without realizing it.

Nietzsche’s famous line—“God is dead, and we have killed him!”—comes from a philosophical parable he told. In it, a man (think of a John-the-Baptist-style prophetic figure) stands in the middle of a European city crying out to passersby. His accusation is not that they are actively rebelling against God, but that they are living as though God no longer meaningfully exists. They attend church, maintain polite friendships, and use religious language, yet God does not truly factor into how they make decisions, spend money, or raise their children. That, Nietzsche says, is the sense in which “we have killed him.”

Nietzsche does not necessarily celebrate this condition, but he does insist on honesty about it. As he sees it, people should stop cloaking their lives in a thin veneer of Christianity and admit that they do not actually want God to disrupt or upend them.

From there, Nietzsche imagines three kinds of responses to this realization:

1)    Those who cannot—or will not—see how the world ‘really’ works. They are content as long as their comfortable lives remain undisturbed. They live in nice homes, enjoy their entertainment, and take their vacations. They don’t want to be bothered by uncomfortable truths, and as a result, they are unlikely to make much of a difference in the world.

2)    Those who do see the world for what it is but feel powerless to do anything about it. They acknowledge that they are living without God, yet resign themselves to the belief that life has no real meaning. They see clearly, but act very little.

3)    Those who recognize that meaning does not come from above, but must be created from within. These are the people who exert themselves, shape the world in their own image, and impose meaning through their strength and creativity. The pinnacle of this type is the figure Nietzsche famously calls the Übermensch—the one who can rise up, create values, and bring the world to heel through force of will. This, ultimately, is the fullest expression of the will to power.

It is this moral vision—willing ourselves to power—that I fear has blinded many evangelicals to the way of the cross. The motivation is often sincere. Many people I love hold a set of deeply cherished values and admire those who can advance those values in a world that seems hostile to them.

What’s fascinating is that Nietzsche himself is the one who popularized the language of values. For him, it does not finally matter whether what one values is good or evil; what determines the worth of a value is whether someone strong enough can impose it on the world. Values, in this sense, are validated by victory.

This is also why Nietzsche wasn’t a fan of Jesus. He thought that Jesus was generally just making trouble for the people like Caesar – the Übermensch – who had been able to rise up and make the world as they wanted it to be. By preaching a kingdom in which the meek would inherit the earth, Nietzsche thought, Jesus was just fomenting anger among people who would never be able to rise up and conquer.

So why has this vision of rising up, exerting ourselves, and imposing our values become so seductive for people who are named for the “good news” (euangelion)? The gospel Jesus proclaimed was precisely that the world does not work according to Rome’s patterns. The good news was that the world was being remade by a God revealed not through domination, but through self-giving love—through a man who used his power to wash feet, heal the sick, embrace outisders, and was lifted up not on a throne, but on a cross.

The earliest Christians staked their lives on the conviction that Jesus was right: that the way of the cross was a world-altering subversion of our concepts of power by which God was renewing the world. They trusted that what God resurrects will always exceed what we could ever accomplish through force of will. The kingdom in which they were citizens was not one seized through power, but received through faithfulness.

My point here is not finger-pointing. It is confession.

It is, to borrow Isaiah’s exclamation, that I and a man who has been tainted by these seductive tendencies and I live among a people who succumb to these very temptations. I’m tempted by visions of the will-to-power that are termed ‘leadership’ and heralded as virtuous among my people. I’m tempted to identify the way I want the world to be and look for those who can most effectively make it that way. I’m tempted to see myself as a theological culture warrior, amassing intellectual ammunition for the sake of overcoming those in the other camp. That is precisely why I need seasons like Lent and the opportunity to name and turn away from these temptations in favor of the cross. These 40 days are for being honest about whatever tempts me away from the pattern of the cross, especially when it looks like a virtue in my community: exerting our ‘values’ as powerfully as possible. For followers of Jesus, even the most powerfully exerted values are not good if they can’t stand before the foot of the cross.

“Lord, have mercy upon me, O Lord, according to your unfailing love.”

*An examination of the way the will to power has shaped evangelical engagement in American politics is available in my chapter, "Voting, Values, and Vocation: The Shape of Evangelical Politics" in Whatever Happened to Evangelicalism? Al Truesdale, ed. (The Foundry Publishing, 2017).