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In Quest of Protestant Faithfulness in
Postmodern America
Online Publishing
Information
Who are you? Tell us
a little about yourself, your setting and the focus of your work.
An overview of my book is provided below and more in-depth
in the attached file which includes a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. Andover-Newton Professor Emeritus Gabriel
Fackre has provided assistance and encouragement throughout the writing of this
book and is supportive of the project.
In addition to Professor Fackre, other members of the Confessing Christ
Discussion listserv (http://www.confessingchrist.net/),
a prime audience for my book, have reviewed one or more chapters of the
manuscript and have shared helpful commentary.
I have highlighted sections of the book in various draft development
stage on my blog, Onward Christian
Sojourner (http://onwardchristiansojourner.blogspot.com/). I am a
theologically informed lay person and published author and practitioner in the
field of adult basic education where I have been professionally focused since
1983. Information about my book, Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy
Instruction: In Quest of a U.S. Democratic Politics of Literacy can be
accessed here: (http://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Paradigms-Adult-Literacy-Education/dp/0805846247/ref=sr_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351371534&sr=1-17&keywords=U.S.+-+Contemporary+Politics). I have also
published a number of articles and book chapters in my field, many of which can
be accessed here (http://library.nald.ca/research/browse/author?name=George+Demetrion).
My introduction to Christianity began in 1972 with a
conversion experience that summer, which has galvanized my life and thinking in
ways that I could never have fathomed previous to that momentous event (http://www.ctconfucc.org/resources/theology/Demetrion2.html). I have studied, written, and lived out much
of my life from the perceptions of reality opened up by my embrace of
Christianity, amidst many changes of theological understanding. I have audited courses at Hartford Seminary in
Connecticut, and Bethel Seminary in San Diego.
I did PhD level study in U.S. history at the University of Connecticut with
a strong concentration on American religious history, particularly on the
Second Great Awakening and the role of religious culture in the antebellum
period preceding the American Civil War.
I also worked briefly as a campus ministry associate with the Protestant
and Catholic ministers while attending graduate school at Central Connecticut
State College in the 1970s and wrote my master’s thesis on the evangelist,
Charles G. Finney. I detail my faith
narrative in the following document (http://www.ctconfucc.org/resources/theology/thisismystory.pdf),
which is a presentation I gave at my church in 2006 or 2007 . Additional religious reflections mostly of a
theological and autobiographical nature which I wrote between 1995-2007 can be
accessed at the United Church of Christ, Connecticut Conference website,
theotalk (http://www.ctconfucc.org/resources/theology/).
Throughout the course of the 40 years since my conversion
experience, I have studied many academic and more lay-oriented texts on a wide
array of themes through which I have sought to work out my own faith
stance. Much of this has been played out
at the critical intersection between a sharply-attuned critical evangelical and
a more diffusive mainline Protestant identity in which theological probing and
biblical discernment have played a pivotal role in personal faith formation.
This book might be viewed as an imaginative resolution of sorts, noting that
the journey of faith continues within the broader narrative of contemporary
Protestant cultural identity in the working out of faith issues within the
context of an essentially middle class U.S. religious culture in the first
decade of the 21st century.
Throughout this odyssey I have been primarily connected to
United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, and American Baptist
congregations. For the few years immediately following my born again experience
I was engaged in the Pentecostal movement through participation in an Assembly
of God congregation. In the years since 1972 I have read much, thought much and
have worked through many issues in grappling with my faith in which this book
is one significant distillation.
On a professional level I worked as a program manager at
Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford for 17 years and have taught in a
variety of other adult education settings. I am an adjunct online instructor in adult
education at the Virginia Commonwealth University and am currently employed as an
adult education instructor at the Saint Vincent de Paul Career & Education
Center, which is a partner agency of Father Joe’s Village in San Diego, CA (http://my.neighbor.org/) which provides long
term supportive services to homeless adults and family members. Additional professional information is
available on my Linkedin profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/geodem).
What's your project?
Provide a brief précis of your project and an expected completion date.
In Quest of Protestant Faithfulness in Postmodern America: A Boomer’s Engagement with the Faith of Our
Elders—Packer, Bloesch, Fackre, Brueggemann, Moltmann, probes into the
relationship between Scripture and culture in 20th century U.S.
theology and biblical studies and points to the necessity of turning to what
Karl Barth has epigraphically referred to as “the strange new world within the
Bible” for any revitalization of mainline Protestantism on its own foundational
premises in critical dialogue with serious evangelical theology. This project is undertaken through a brief
historical overview underlying this pivotal challenge in Chapter One and through
an in-depth exploration of five representative theologians/biblical scholars
spanning the gamut from conservative evangelical (J.I. Packer) to postliberal
(Walter Brueggemann and Jurgen Moltmann).
A concluding chapter assesses the viability of drawing upon the
neo-orthodox legacy as a potentially bridging resource between evangelical and
postliberal theology. For the
contemporary significance of the neo-orthodox impetus, I have drawn on J. Douglas
Hall and Gary Dorrien as well as the original theologians of that movement.
The struggle to make the case for
the centrality of a broad-based canonical interpretation of the Bible without
getting bogged down over fundamentalist “battles over the Bible” is a critical
challenge of major proportions amidst a good deal of theology and cultural
experience to the contrary within mainline religious culture. So is the corresponding Barthian turn to the
text as a whole rather than that of any specific Barthian interpretation of
Christocentrism or how the Word is revealed through “actualism” of the Holy
Spirit (Husinger, How to Read Karl Barth).
A major stumbling block
to a more discriminating discussion of the critical issues that keeps
evangelical and mainline sensibilities sharply separated is the persistence of
the modernist/fundamentalist divide on the interpretation of the Bible. This tension came to a symbolic climax with
the Scopes Trial of 1925 in which various literal and more figurative
interpretations of the Bible became exceedingly polarized. In some key ways, evangelical and mainline
theology have moved well beyond the intense polarization unleashed on both
sides of this crucial divide during the defining period of the 1920s. Moreover, there have been various moves
toward greater convergence in both camps in which, for example, the current
dialogue between postliberal and an increasingly irenic evangelical theology is
particularly promising as depicted, for example, in T.R. Philips & D.L.
Okholm (Eds): The Nature of Confession: Essays by George Lindbeck, Alister McGrath,
George Hunsinger, Gabriel Fackre and others. (InterVarsity Press, 1993).
My book builds on this
dialogue and provides an additional dimension by incorporating the neo-orthodox
perspective toward the construction of a centrist theological project built on
the triple pillars of canonical scriptural integrity, scholarly theological
acuity, and ecumenical ecclesial comprehensiveness. My book is written in the spirit of Gabriel
Fackre’s two short books Ecumenical Faith
in Evangelical Perspective (Eerdmanns, 1993 and Restoring the Center: Essays Evangelical and Ecumenical (IVP,
1998) and is resonant in content with his more extensive theological work as
discussed in Chapter Four.
The book addresses two consequential issues facing
contemporary U.S. Protestantism: the
role of the Bible in its canonical integration and the viability establishing a
durable centrist position between moderate evangelical and mainline theological
perspectives. These issues are explored through historical analysis,
biographical profiles of the five major authors, addressed in separate chapters,
and the author’s own theological and spiritual odyssey across the landscape of
Protestant theology and religious culture over a forty year period which is
interspersed where relevant particularly in Chapter One and Chapter Five. The persisting modernist/ fundamentalist split
within contemporary Protestant culture as stumbling block of major proportions
toward establishing a vital theological center is an underlying theme running through
the book. This book is designed to
contribute toward an imaginative resolution of this dilemma. It does so initially by raising the issue in
explicit terms (Chapter One). It then evaluates its continuing impact, and ultimately
identifying the importance of its resolution in part through the theological
comprehensiveness offered throughout this book. It is only through such a
resolution; an “imaginative exorcism,” as I describe it in the book, that establishing
a vital Protestant center becomes reasonably plausible in coming to terms with
this period of increasing Christian diaspora, a topic discussed in some depth
in Hall’s Thinking the Faith as
addressed in Chapter Seven of my book.
In Quest of Protestant
Faithfulness in Postmodern America consists of seven chapters and is about
125,000 words or approximately 300 pages in published book format. It is designed for advanced seminary students,
theologians, biblical scholars, theologically informed pastors and laity, and
others who have a strong interest in contemporary theology, biblical studies,
and 20th century U.S. Protestant religious culture, such as those
who participate on the Confessing Christ listserv.
How does you project
advance the field in which you work? In what way will the field be different
after its publication?
The book addresses an important theme, posits a provocative
proposal, and provides an in-depth overview of some key contemporary Protestant
theologians and biblical scholars who are broadly ecumenical within the context
of their respective spheres of influence.
With the exception of Moltmann, little in- depth has been written on the
other four theologians and biblical scholars detailed in Chapters Two-to-Six. Given their respective influence across the
theological landscape of contemporary Protestant culture, the profiles in
themselves help fill an important gap in the field. Placing these five on a continuum from
conservative evangelical to postliberal provides a way of drawing out and
imaginatively working through both the prospects and the problematics of establishing
a vital centrist ground in contemporary Protestant theology and religious
culture. So does the broad dialogue
between evangelical, postliberal and neo-orthodox perspectives that is teased
out within the biographical chapters and more formally articulated in the first
and last chapter of the book. In
spanning the gamut from Packer to Moltmann and from evangelical to neo-orthodox
theology, In Quest of Protestant
Faithfulness in Postmodern America will serve as a resource in facilitating
critical dialogue among divergent schools of thought both in seminary circles
as well as among the discerning reading public among Protestant clergy and
theologically informed laity.
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