There Must Be More to This: Reimagining Evangelical Faith with Justice at the Core

By Matt Hyam

There Must Be More to This is a book about social justice. To get there it may have to unpick a lot of evangelical assumptions that, perhaps, you did not know you were allowed to unpick, and it may need to ask questions, that, perhaps, you did now know you were allowed to ask. In the end, hopefully, we will be able to rediscover an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hopeful Ink.
• Release date: Aug 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781739900816

Book preview

Introduction

This is a book about social justice. I say this because you could be forgiven for not noticing it straight away. Over recent years, I have had the privilege of studying Theology and, in doing so, discovered a love for it that I never knew I had. To get from where I was before, to where I am now, involved unpicking a lot of evangelical assumptions that I did not know we were allowed to unpick…but it is no good just deconstructing things if you do not intend to rebuild them again. I do not seek to offend anyone, but rather to bring people on the journey that I have been on; a journey that has led to my asking questions and rediscovering ancient truths, that much of my previous experience had discarded or forgotten. When I did begin to rebuild things, it formed a different picture to the one I was expecting because, what I seemed to see at every turn, was that social justice was front and centre of everything, but it had always been obscured by the theology I had held.

It was during the first term at Spurgeon’s Bible College that I realised that most of what I believed was not actually from the Bible, but, in fact, from Greek philosophy and mythology,¹ medieval culture and art, and Western modernist assumptions. I was studying for a Certificate in Theology at an institution not known for its radically progressive thinking - at the time I was studying there, they had only admitted women within the last ten years - so it is not as though I was hearing outlandish, liberal teaching at a high academic level,² but it shook my entire faith. It made me question what on earth I believed and why. It made me realise that I had a great deal to learn. It made me realise that my faith was in Jesus and if it could not stand a few awkward questions and the high possibility that I had a lot of things wrong, then it was a very poor kind of faith.

That was more than 25 years ago, and I have learned a lot in that time; I have learned that I was very wrong about so many things, and I have learned enough to know that I am almost certainly very wrong about so many things now. But that is the nature of discipleship. I am a student. The moment that I am sure that I have a lock on anything and can no longer learn then I have a big problem.

When I attended Spurgeon’s back then, I did so reluctantly, because I considered that I had kingdom work to do, and this theology stuff was an unnecessary distraction. I now have an MA in Theology and would love to study further. Somewhere along the line, I realised that studying to confirm my assumptions was not what it was supposed to be about, and that properly engaging with the scriptures through Theology is rich and rewarding and, well, essential, and it may well mean your world gets turned the right way up.

The more that I have studied, the more convinced I am that following Jesus is meant to be simple (which is not the same as easy, by the way). The early believers were primarily illiterate, uneducated, lower class slaves, or workers and yet they managed to understand enough to happily give their lives, challenge the powers and ultimately change the world. Centuries, even millennia, of political agendas, religious wars, cultural assumptions, and dubious choices, have left us with a complicated religion that (I will try to show as we go through the book) requires a great deal of theological gymnastics to hold together. It is my belief that Theology is about digging through all this muck to get back to the simplicity buried below. It is my greatest joy to see people set free when they meet with the real Jesus and start to follow him, and I hope that, through this book, you will be able to share in this.

I became a Christian at 18, in a successful Baptist church and then went to university where I was involved in a couple of charismatic, evangelical churches over the next three or four years. During those years I was also heavily involved in the Christian Union, and that season significantly shaped my faith. 29 years ago, at the age of 23, I rather arrogantly and naively started what became a church. At that time, I, like many people, had been exposed to virtually nothing outside the evangelical tradition and was quite happy about that. To my shame I must admit that, until the last few years, I had been labouring under the illusion that evangelical Christianity was Christianity, and that all those not in this stream, were just paying lip-service to God and did not really get the idea at all.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines evangelicalism in this way: Evangelical church: any of the classical Protestant churches or their offshoots, but especially in the late 20th century, churches that stress the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Church, personal conversion experiences, Scripture as the sole basis of faith, and active evangelism (the winning of personal commitments to Christ). While this is as good a definition as any for evangelicalism in the UK, in the US, the label carries other, even pejorative, connotations – anti-gay, anti-women, anti-intellectual, Republican, insular.

By assuming that only we evangelicals had it right, I had effectively written off 80% of the worldwide body of Christ. If we stop and examine the implications of that, we are left with some disturbing questions. Do we really believe that it took until the last 300 years of post-Reformation evangelicalism for people to get Christianity ‘right’? Do we believe that all who went before were wrong? I hope that we would answer no.

I recently heard of a national figure in the UK evangelical church saying that evangelicalism was something that they would die for.³ Is that not dangerously close to idolatry? Is that not placing my view of scripture and my understanding of church above, or at least equal to, Jesus? Is that not the same as the Pharisees accusing Jesus of breaking the law, when in fact he was breaking their interpretation of the law, having lost sight of the possibility that their interpretation might be wrong?

The more that I have studied, the harder I have found it to hold a lot of popular evangelical theology together with what I see in scripture. I have realised that we need to stop, listen, and learn from other streams who have been around longer, gone through more than we ever have and who have a deep, rich tradition from which we can benefit greatly. I do not believe that every tradition outside of evangelicalism has it all right and that we have everything wrong; as Brian Zahnd noted, at a recent conference in my hometown, I think all the different streams have about as much good in them as each other. I think he is mostly right. We all have something to learn from each other or we will, at best, be the poorer for it, or more worryingly, be making some big mistakes. I am concerned, however, that we as evangelicals, can often be in danger of thinking that we are more right than everyone else, or even worse, that only we are right.

I started writing this book to address the many questions that people were raising with me, as a pastor, about things that were increasingly coming across as problematic within evangelical beliefs and practices. I hoped that in the process of reading this, people would develop a fresh love for Jesus and his scriptures, which is no bad thing.

However, as I began to get into writing it, I found that the process was taking me in a different direction and highlighting the theme of justice as ‘centre stage’ in the overarching story of scripture. As I said at the start, it seems as though I cannot get away from it, and I really think that we are missing something within evangelicalism. It is encouraging to see that social action has become more normal in most churches now. This is radically different from twenty years ago, but I think there is a bigger story here. I recently read a governing document for a UK denomination containing the four purposes of the movement. There was nothing wrong with any of them, but what struck me was the absence of any reference to social justice or to addressing poverty. I am convinced that it should not be a side issue or a bolt-on, but instead, central to our thinking. I think that this is the key to understanding the Kingdom of God.

It is worth pausing and noting at this point, that the definition of evangelicalism within the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and that suggested by David Bebbington,⁴ which is almost universally accepted by evangelicals, contain barely any reference at all to social justice.

To explore this, I have separated the book into three sections which reflect the journey that I myself have been on. The first part questions some of the tenets of evangelicalism that, in the past, I held as unquestionable, but which, worryingly, espouse a view of God and humanity that is counter to social justice. I want to look at these because I think we need to recognise that these are not universally held, historical truths but are actually relatively recent and limited to the Evangelical Church. Having made my case for why I do not think I can uphold these views, the second section will specifically examine what the Good News is, and what we are being invited into, because as I said before, there is no point knocking something down without rebuilding it. The final section will explore what I began to see, having rebuilt my understanding around broader views and interpretations that were not limited to evangelicalism. This brings us in a full circle, back to what I said at the start; what I saw was the centrality of the theme of justice throughout the scriptures from Israel, through the Gospels, to New Testament church.

The journey in this book is not necessarily obvious, or even direct, but it is my journey, and it has led me to be absolutely certain that there must more to this.

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¹ As Richard Rohr notes, most Christians’ view of God bears far more resemblance to Zeus than to the God of the Bible. Rohr, R. (2017, Feb 27). A Circle Dance. Retrieved June 11, 2021, from Center for Action and Contemplation: https://cac.org/a-circle-dance-2017-02-27/.

² Not that Spurgeon’s does not teach at a high level, but I was only doing a certificate, which was the lowest level at which they teach.

³ To be fair, I do not for a moment imagine this was a deliberate decision, and I am sure that if they stopped and considered the implications, they might be concerned. My point is that to claim that your unique view is worth dying for, as against everyone else’s, is close to idolatrous. It would be no different if someone were to say they would die for Catholicism, or Orthodoxy or Anabaptism, or Anglicanism, or their country, or their football team.

⁴ Bebbington’s evangelical distinctives are as follows: 1. Conversionism, 2. Activism, 3. Biblicism, 4. Crucicentrism. Bebbington, D. (n.d.). What is an Evangelical. Retrieved June 11, 2021, from National Association of Evangelicals: https://www.nae.net/what-is-anevangelical/. Although, point 2 and 3 can include some measure of social justice, Bebbington’s observation of evangelicalism suggests that social justice is not seen as sufficiently important to warrant its own point.

Part 1

He has shut the door and bolted it, which is very lively and exciting if you are in that room, but the point is, there’s an awful lot of the Bible that is locked out of that room

- Tom Wright,

The Man behind the Theology, Nomad Podcast, June 2015.

1

Security on the Door

We cannot enter into Gospel partnership with churches which deny the fundamental Bible doctrines set out in the Affinity doctrinal basis.

- Affinity⁵

A key feature of most evangelical denominations and organisations is the presence of a statement of faith or a doctrinal basis. It seems that these are considered essential to pin down the exact details of what real Christianity is and these details act as security on the door to ensure that only those who adhered to them would be in.

For well over one thousand years, the Apostles’ creed and the Nicene creed served as the statement of belief for the church of Jesus Christ throughout the world, in all its diversity. It was not until the Reformation, a mere five hundred years ago, that this began to change, and it was not until less than 300 years ago that modern-day evangelicalism appeared.⁶ Suddenly,