Worshiping Like Nazarenes

When I was a kid I remember sitting in church next to my dad, on Sunday nights especially, and listening to him worship. He never sang very loud (as he says he was asked to un-volunteer from the choir once) but he hasn’t ever been afraid to raise his voice. My dad, like many other fine Nazarenes of his and the older generations, loves to give a hearty amen and talk back to the preacher. Now the Nazarene church has nothing on some of the great African American church traditions when it comes to talking back to the preacher, but we are not a quiet bunch.

So on Sunday night as the district gathered for worship it was awesome then to sit and worship with my son. I don’t get to sit with my family during a worship service very often. And on Sunday night Logan was so engaged in the whole experience. He loved the music (impressively he knew every word to three of the songs and simply read the screens and sang along with the other two), he loved the videos, and he really enjoyed all the people talking back to the preacher. Every time someone shouted out an “Amen” or a “Hallelujah” Logan happily joined along.

At one point Dr. Warrick who was preaching said something I particularly enjoyed so I gave him a loud, “There you go!” The next time he said something Logan joined in saying, “There you go, like my dad said, there you go.” At this our friends in front of us just started laughing and I smiled with delight. It is great to see my son at 5 years old, engaging in worship and imitating those around him. This is how discipleship works. What I need to do now is to unleash Logan to teach the people in our congregation to worship. Our people at DCC engage in worship, but among many there is a spirit of timidity or hesitation in regards to expressing themselves. All we need to do to change this is put the kids throughout the congregation and give them the freedom to express themselves and respond in worship.

A few months of kids wholeheartedly singing and yelling out Hallelujah and some of our people might even start to smile.

A Connectional People

When we describe ourselves within the COTN we say we are a Christian People, a Holiness People and a Missional People. I would like to add to that list a Connectional People. It is not just that we are an organized people connected to a system. There really is a sense of connection with the COTN that expands around the globe. As we Skyped in some of our missionaries from the Western Mediterranean and from Japan during our missions convention and as we celebrated stories from around the globe about the work of our church, there was truly a sense that we are all in this together. People responded all three days with great joy at the work of God among our youth, the work of God in the churches on our district, and the work of God around the globe.

And then we laughed

One thing that our gatherings for District Assembly did not lack was laughter. Any preceding ruled by Roberts Rules of Order has the great threat to be a dull affair. But even with numerous votes to take on electing a new DS, electing delegates for next year’s General Assembly and myriads of other reports there was great energy and laughter. The leadership did a great job of adding some liveliness to the sessions and gave us permission to laugh about somethings that simply require a bit of laughter.

The best moments of laughter accompanied the most detailed and boring video I have ever seen. It was a very necessary and undeniably dull video on how to reorder missionary books and resources for the coming year. After it was done there was a moment when we could have either acted like that was a really important moment that we all were delighted to partake in or with great honesty simply laugh. Thanks be to God our leadership allowed us to laugh. That would not have been the case in other gatherings. I dig that about us.

And then the Spirit Showed Up

The most wonderful part of District Assembly, however, was the clear presence of the Spirit. Each day there were beautiful moments when God descended and it became not a business meeting but a sacred family gathering. The Spirit was there on Sunday night as the youth convention worshiped with along side the rest of the District and people responded to the call of God on their lives. It was there on Monday as we honored Dr. Lee Woolery and Alice (our retiring DS and his lovely wife) with a fantastic suprise as the district flew in their two sons, one from Japan the other from Seattle, to be there as we honored their parents. It was there during Dr. Woolery’s final DS report when he challenged us to take on the task of truly making disciples. It was there that night when we ordained two new elders and renewed our commitment to our calling as elders.

The Spirit was there on Tuesday as we elected a new district superintendent. I am sure that our friend Dave Bartley had no idea coming into this assembly that he would leave with his life forever changed. But the voting that carried him into this new calling was moved along by the Spirit of God blowing into that sanctuary. This is such and exciting moment for the future of our district as God has led us to a leader who knows our context well, who is gifted, and who has the character and Spirit necessary to lead our leaders.

The moment was made complete for me just after Dave was elected and they brought him up on the stage. The look on his face was one mixed with disbelief, terror, and amazement. And yet, filled with those wide range of motions, Dave walked forward to that podium and humbly committed to answering this call with his life. It was a beautiful moment.

So there are some thoughts about our peculiar tribe. We are far from perfect, we are strange sometimes, and we are a people of God. It is a beautiful family to be a part of.

I have been in Nazarene ministry now for 30 years; I wouldn’t change a thing if I could. I love the Church of the Nazarene more now than I ever have in my life.

But today, I am a concerned Nazarene.

Doctrinal Heritage
I am concerned that our precious Articles of Faith, those 16 grand biblical statements of doctrine based directly on Scripture, and our Wesleyan-Arminian and Holiness Movement history that have guided us well for over a century are under attack. Not from those outside our Christian faith, but from those inside.

These are people who believe we have been and desire us to be again who we never have been—a church in the Fundamentalist/Reformed tradition or at least the spirit and tactics thereof. John Wesley, Phoebe Palmer, H. Orton Wiley, and William Greathouse would blanch in concern today if they knew the insidious theological and ecclesiastical battle going on through the Internet, driven by categorization, guilt-by-association, and “gotcha” tactics that more represent radical politics than anything remotely biblical, Christian, or certainly holiness.

That is one of the primary questions that I went into our European expedition asking. It is a question I have been pondering for some time. When we began to talk to people about this trip, I kept coming back to this idea that there were really important lessons to learn from spending time with our brothers and sisters in Europe and hearing their stories. The primary passion in my desire to partner with these churches was honestly selfish. There are undoubtedly ways we can bless them and help them in their ministries, but frankly there has been a selfish desire from the start to learn from our partnership. The desire of my heart is to better understand our context here by understanding better their context.

The whirlwind immersion we experienced for 14 days began this process of learning. I am deeply thankful for the pastors and missionaries we spent time with for sharing their stories, visions, passions, and struggles. They not only taught me a great deal but inspired me as well. Here are some of the reflections from this experience, specifically about what we can learn from the European church.

We take the advantages of our context totally for granted

Almost everyone of the pastors we talked with were bi-vocational. They simply marveled at all of us being able to devote ourselves fully to ministry. Think of how much our plans for churches would differ if all of our staffing were bi-vocational. Beyond that our government actually protects (in most cases) and provides opportunities for churches as non-profit organizations. Every country we visited the government was standoffish at best and down right hostile at worst towards churches. Ministry in this context is radically different than in our own.

I kept coming back to the prophets and their words to a people in exile when talking to these pastors. They are exiles in a culture that does not desire them and is not open to them. Living as exiles is a radically different posture than our lives in North America where we can still count on a good portion of the population to respect or at least understand us as Christians.

We have so many resources. The pastors there had very few resources available for Bible study, theological education, ministry and worship. This is really true of their people resources as well. When we want to figure out lighting, technology, music, preaching, leadership development and so on there are an army of consultants and ministries competing for our attention and money. They have so little help in these regards.

One of the most difficult choices we have to make as North American Christians is which fully staffed, highly programmed church with a well trained staff, gifted preacher and beautiful facility do we wish to attend. The people we encountered there were traveling for 45-90 minutes one way, on public transportation to go and worship at these churches on a Sunday. That means that they have a very difficult time living life together or getting together beyond Sunday morning. How do you disciple people you only get to see on Sunday morning? That is a difficult reality to face.

Growing the kingdom is way harder than shuffling sheep

As the pastors I met marveled at the open ministry contexts in which we pastor I kept feeling pangs of guilt/shame/insufficiency. With all of these advantages the church in North America isn’t prevailing. It has been in decline for a generation. Most of our churches that are growing, if we are truly honest, are growing by a reshuffling of sheep far more than the conversion of the lost. As our culture has begun to shift away from the church we have gotten extremely good at getting the church people who are still left and gathering them in one highly efficient and well run location.

But when that is not an option, when there are no Christians to shuffle about, growth is slow and take really hard work. The soil of Europe is not fertile. The people are inoculated against the church. This is a totally different soil than the soil of Africa, South America and Asia where the church is exploding right now. That soil is being cultivated for the first time. The soil of Europe is having to be cultivated after many years of over use. It is stripped of its vibrancy.

Most of us in the North American context haven’t invested into the difficult and slow moving process of cultivating the soil of the difficult to reach because it is still so much easier to reach the previously churched. It is a lot more fun to reach a bunch of people who are looking for a church right now than it is to spend years working to reach a far smaller number of those for whom the church is a mystery or is seen as and adversary.

The pastors there are facing the challenges that we will increasingly face in our country over the next generation. Hopefully through a long term relationship with these pastors we will better learn together how to cultivate this difficult soil.

There really is only one Father, One Son, One Spirit that unites us all

I think it was in the worship service with the Haitian congregation in Paris that it really hit me. They had just finished a time of prayer and offering and the church broke out into the Doxology. I might not have known the words in French, but I understood clearly the voices and the Spirit involved. It is so true that we, like all versions of the church before us, tend to paint the picture of God in our minds in our own image. But standing there listening to those voices the diversity and wonder of God hit me in a different way. I just needed that reminder. I needed to hear stories about the the same God from other voices in other languages. I needed to hear the same passions from pastors in other countries. I needed to be reminded of the power of the Word of God in any language. God is so much bigger and more wonderful than we take time to notice.

The first image is from our visit yesterday to the Vatican. It was my first time in St. Peter’s Basilca and I was awed by the experience. The beauty of St. Peter’s is found in the immense power of its presence and in the intricate details in its creation. The basilica itself is huge and breathtakingly beautiful. The scale of its creation is mindboggling. You have no doubt that its designers and builders were intending to establish the kingdom of God here on earth. Every detail has purpose and excellence.

I was very moved by being there and spent several quiet moments in prayer. I simply wanted to add my voice to the chorus of God’s children who have gathere there for worship for over a millenium. They were prayers of thankfulness, humility and a deep desire to hear the voice of God. There was a spirit of humility that fell upon me being in that place. Part of that was that God seemed overwhelming in that place. His grandeur and power were brought to the present in a profound way.

A couple hours later we made our way through the Vatican museum to the Sistine Chapel. This is truly a place that pictures can’t capture. It is far different than I pictured in my mind. I so enjoyed wandering around, with my neck craned upwards, to see the story of God on display there in its images. That is a holy place. It was holy even as it was packed with tourists from around the globe, many of who were undoubtedly there just out of curiosity and with litte appreciation for the act of worship in its creation.

Those images were sharply contrasted today as we met with Joel the DS of Italy and ventured over to the Nazarene church in Rome. There we met Pastor Angela and saw the church. The building itself is a three story villa in a nice neighborhood. The COTN has owned the property since the 50s or 60s. The church was started here many years ago but then it died out. Angela restarted the church and now pastors 10-20 people there. She shared with her the story of her family and how they came to faith. It started with her grandfather who was an editor under Mussolini. His job was to read books that were being published and to check them for any dissent against the dictator. One day the book that arrived in a box for him to read was a Bible. He spent the next week reading the whole thing. At the end he simply fell to his knees and prayed to the God he had never known. He found a small address on the inside cover of the Bible and went to that home in the night.

He assured them he was there as a friend and he came in and asked them about the Bible. 6 weeks later he was secretly baptized and began to open up his home each night for churches to secretly meet during this time of religious persecution. Angela’s father became the first Italian Nazarene pastor after an encounter with a Christian at at bus stop that lead in a short time to his conversion and baptism as well.

Angela, who is in her late 50s to 60s I would guess (a very dangerous thing to do with a woman’s age) and her brother who pastors a church in Sicily are part of the remnant of the church in Italy. There are so many different forces at work making the spread of the kingdom so difficult here. There has been very little effective protestant presence in Italy. There were many years of Mussolini’s oppressive regime where the church had no freedom of expression. There is the dominant presence of Catholicism and a long history of distrust for clergy and church leaders based on their practices that run in contrast with their faith.

Yet there is still a remnant. The Kingdom of God is still working. Angela is a woman of remarkable faith and courage. She is still striving and taking great joy in her work for Christ. There have been so many battles for the COTN here in Italy but slowly and surely the church is finding traction and Christ is being displayed.

So there are two contrasting images, the Vatican and Angela and the Nazarene Church in Rome. One will stop you in your tracks and the other you would drive by without knowing its existence. And suprisingly of the two the second was the more beautiful. There in that small chapel singing hymns and praying with our newly discovered sister in Christ God wasn’t distant or overwhelming, he was close. His Spirit was in our midst.

Thanks be to God whose church will prevail.

There are some big questions that I am reflecting on and praying over before I hop across the pond with my fellow pastors. I thought I would share. (I will be blogging throughout my travels to prove to people I am doing work not just sightseeing and eating pastries at cafes as a running journal of the experience, make sure you check back over the next couple of weeks) These questions appear in no particular order

1) What do we have to learn from churches in these countries? There are only 38 Nazarene churches in these four countries. This is a testament to the difficulty in kingdom work in a post-Christendom world. Most of these churches are among immigrant populations not indigenous. What can we learn about ministry in our increasingly post-Christendom culture from these churches?

2) How do we build a partnership with churches in a different context in a mutually beneficial way? I am not heading over there with any preconceived notion that these churches need to partner with us because we have all the answers for them. I rather suspect that we have very few answers for them. What I am seeking, and what we have to offer them, is a celebratory relationship of being united in Christ. We need to be connected to Christians around the globe. That diversity helps us see the bigger picture about the work of the Kingdom of God and about God. Duneland Community Church needs to be connected to another group of Christians that are different than we are. We need a bigger view of God and the world. What I am not sure of is what that type of long term, holistic partnership looks like.

3) How does God want to use me? I am so thoroughly excited about this trip for numerous reasons. One of the reasons is that I get the privilege of preaching to some different churches while we are over there. I have been translated a couple of times when preaching, but it is not often I have the privilege of blessing with the Word of God those outside of my own context. What does God want to say through me? What message of hope does God desire me to offer my brothers and sisters in Christ? You can pray about that one with me. I have been praying about these opportunities to speak for many months. Pray that God gives me great clarity and that his Spirit will descend upon those worship services and allow his truth to transcend cultural and language barriers.

4) Are there a people God has already chosen for us? I am really trying to listen to the voice of God on this trip to discern whether or not there is a specific church that God would have us partner with. When I went to Russia on a visioning trip it was amazing to go through that process of listening and discerning and the connection God brought between Christ Church and the Slobdosky orphanage. Is there another connection like that for DCC?

5) What does it mean to be Nazarene in Europe? There are more Nazarenes outside of North American than inside of it. Yet the church has been dominated by middle class white North American culture, theology, and leadership. How does this effect our churches around the globe? What does being a Nazarene mean to them? How can these churches reshape what we are doing in North America.

Well those are some reflections today. Now I am off to finish off the ridiculously long list of things I have to do to be able to head out on Monday.

Most of you will be familiar with the scene in the movie the Matrix where Neo has to choose between taking the red pill or the blue pill. If he takes the blue pill he will wake up in his bed and his life will go on the same as it always has. If he takes the blue pill he will wake up with an entirely different world in front of him. He will be free of the bondage he grew up in and he will know the truth. If he takes the red pill, however, and wakes up to the truth there is simply no going back. You can’t untake the pill.

Lately my life has taken on a feeling of having jumped down the rabbit’s hole and into a whole new world. I feel as if I took the red pill and have awoken to a new reality and there is simply no going back. So what is this reality that I have awoken too and how has it changed me?

A major piece of this new reality is in the nature of the mission of the church. When I began my journey down the rabbit hole a decade ago it was because of discontent. I was simply convinced that there had to be more to the church than what I had experienced and been taught. There was a hunger in my soul for more meaning and impact. This journey led me to the Emerging Church and some important conversations. Then it led me to conversations around the Missional Church and incarnational ministry. Now it has finally taken me to our work with 3DM and building a discipling culture. I have no doubt that my journey won’t end here, but I do feel as if I have reached some important moments that have reshaped everything for me.

I look at so many churches out there and I am left to wonder about them. Do the people who are there realize there is a huge piece of the kingdom of God and the gospel itself that is hidden from them? I wonder at pastors I know and pastors I meet. Do they have the same discontents that I did? Are they content in fulfilling expectations and roles defined by a culture that will cease to exist over the next generation? Are they blissful in their ignorance? Are they troubled but too afraid to admit it? Are they simply lost and have no idea of where to look for answers?

I am very aware of my own lack of understanding about the nature of the church. I am aware of my personal shortcomings and the need I have to passionately live my life in pursuit of the holiness of God. But looking around I feel as if I have slowly but surely woken up to a new world that is so much more nuanced, beautiful, and full of hope than the one I knew before. I can never go back to the old way of thinking or doing things, especially in regards to the culture and mission of the church. I can’t submit to systems that are antiquated or worse yet that stand in the way of doing the work of the kingdom of God. Once you take the red pill there is simply no going back.

So as I stand here and look around at the world around me I am thankful. I am thankful for the wonderful people who I continue to meet who have also taken the red pill. It is good to have friends on the journey. I am unbelievably thankful for a wife who is a true partner. Gretchen gets it. I can’t imagine pursuing the life before if she didn’t. I am thankful for guides who are further along the journey than I am. Their words of encouragement and example are life changing every day. I am so thankful for Duneland Community Church, where the kingdom of God is alive and well and our leadership has agreed to take this journey with me. I can’t imagine pastoring another church. What a privilege I have!

My prayer is that my spirit will remain humble and patient with those who are not ready to take the red pill. I want to always only be an encouragement to them.  I want to be a guide for those who wish to follow. For those who don’t I am okay being an enigma. Once you open your eyes to the truth around you, you can simply never go back.

Today I want to delve into a bit more of Smith’s deconstruction of our beliefs about the Bible before moving on to his ideas of how to better view scripture. One of the things Smith challenges us to consider is this.

Most biblicists carry on with unperturbed confidence in biblicist assumptions and beliefs, paying little attention to the ramifications of multiple counterclaims about rival biblical teachings. Why and how can this be?

Smith offers a couple of possibilities for why this may be.

1. Our Social Networks – In essence, birds of a feather flock together. We naturally gravitate towards other like minded people and as a result we don’t actually deal with the differing theologies of our Christian brothers and sisters that much. We stay clustered and don’t pay much mind to what others believe or teach. (Here he uses the word homophily to describe this phenomenon)
2. A tendency to minimize the real differences of interpretation and the significance of these differences – Our natural response to the question about differing interpretations of scripture by other evangelicals is often a belief that the differences are minor and that we mostly believe the same things. In fact these differences may be much larger than we are ready to admit.
3. We benefit by emphasizing our differences from each other – Somewhat going against the earlier idea, we gain a strong sense of identity within our particular theological spheres by emphasizing our uniqueness from other groups. These differences reinforce our connection to denominations and theological clusters. This has obvious benefits for us personally and corporately.Our identity is shaped as much by who we are as by who we aren’t. (Think of Duke and Carolina for a powerful example of this. They are both greater because of the other)
4.  Overcoming biblical and theological differences toward Christian unity sounds like “ecumenism”. Ecumenism sounds like liberal Protestantism. And liberal Protestantism is bad. Better to be divided in absolute commitment to truth than to be unified in flaccid, liberal compromise. In this way being divided is almost a badge of honor.

Smith is quick to say that these are just possible explanations for why we aren’t more uneasy about the wide array of interpretations that those within evangelicalism hold to. As a sociologist Smith does hit on some interesting ideas here. I for one will quickly jump on point 3 as a characteristic of the Church of the Nazarene. There is such a strong identity within the church of having a unique or peculiar understanding of holiness. This holiness badge insulates us from the interpretations of others and keeps us from having to seriously interact with the theological work of others. We can hold to our own interpretations like a great security blanket because to let go of them enough to interact meaningfully with others is to dance on the slippery slope of compromise.

Do you see merit in these ideas? What can you identify with in Smith’s observations? Have the groups that you have been a part of been marked by significant openness to conversations outside of their normal theological parameters? What are the benefits or drawbacks from these stances?

Tourism is being hurt around the globe by recession and violence. Countries such as Syria are suffering mightily because of the effects of unrest on their tourism industry. This is leading to even more unrest that is spurring once conservative and satisfied business owners to pressure the government for changes.

This change is not unlike the changing financial realities effecting the church. We have the pinnacle of megachurch prosperity, the Crystal Cathedral filing for bankruptcy. That was unthinkable even a few short years ago. For many churches, the death of church tourism has really hurt. It hasn’t just been that attendance is down, but the excess money many people were using to support the mission of the church has dried up. It is very similar to the way many people have stopped traveling as much because of the economy. The death of tourism is felt in many ways.

In the Church of the Nazarene the global downturn has forced significant changes. In the last several years the COTN has downsized almost half of their staff from their global headquarters. The COTN also unveiled a new Funding the Mission budget systems for all churches that is intended to continue the support of the global mission of the church while at the same time easing the financial burdens being felt by local churches. I have been really proud of our denomination’s work to change in the midst of these struggles.

That is why I was equally excited by the news that the church has sold off it’s church loan arm for $26 million and has used that money to pay off completely the Global Ministry Center the church built a few years ago. The church also recently agreed to sell the old headquarters building.

Every time I have heard our leadership talk about our financial future there has been a ready and willing spirit to change the way we do church in order to not only accommodate the financial changes of the world but to prepare the church to thrive.

I am wondering if your churches have been forced to make changes because of the economy and if any of those changes have been for the better? How is the death of church tourism spurring necessary changes in your church?

For the past several weeks we have been discussing David Fitch’s new book The End of Evangelicalism? You can see the earlier parts of this conversation here and here.  Today we continue by examining the “Decision for Christ”, how our theology of conversion developed and how it effects the way we live out our faith.

The decision for Christ is one of three master signifiers that Fitch identifies as part of the developed ideology of evangelicalism. (The previous post talks more extensively about the significance of a master signifier) The decision for Christ emerged in the 20th century as a defining characteristic of the evangelical church. As many mainline churches moved away from the atonement language of salvation and focused more on inviting people into their efforts at creating a better society evangelicals began to focus on the moment of personal salvation.

No one illustrates this more than the wonderful Rev. Billy Graham. Dr. Graham has spent his life bringing people to a moment of decision. His radio programs was called The Hour of Decision. Tens of millions have been blessed by Dr. Graham’s ministry and who knows how many people came forward in a moment of decision at one of his crusades. These crusades show the theology of conversion at work in evangelicalism. Dr. Graham did not pastor a church. He came into town, held a large event, brought forth an articulate presentation of the gospel and then called those in attendance to a moment of individual decision. After the decision there was an attempt to attach this individual to a local church or at least get them some materials to begin to study and grow with as they now learned to follow Jesus.

The results of this theology on evangelicalism and our practices is significant. Here is what Fitch says.

Yet we are still under the spell of “the decision”. The practices of the evangelical megachurch movement, for instance, testify to the reality that these most visible of evangelicals still operate under assumptions of “the decision”. “The decision” assumes salvation is individual, begun through a voluntary act, and then nurtured through individually acquired learning and worship.

How then has our theology of conversion adversely effected our mission as the church? For one it seems to have distracted us from our calling to make disciples. We have developed a fascination with the number of people we can mark down as having prayed a prayer of salvation. We then only secondarily consider how many of them actually grow in their faith or show true transformation. In addition we have increasingly separated out salvation and sanctification into two distinctly different events with a multitude of adverse effects. We have a generation of Christians who are immature in their faith and view holiness and sanctification as some sort of higher calling that only super Christians seek after.

We also have placed far too much emphasis on a cognitive choice brought about by effective preaching. We have lost a sense of the vitality of the church as community in the process of salvation and in developing disciples. We have lost the power of experiencing God’s love as a primary part of our witness to the gospel and replaced it with well articulated gospel presentations, tracts, and altar calls. I think Fitch is right in identifying “the decision” as often being an empty ideology. We use it to convince ourselves we are doing the work of the church but it is leading us too often away from the work of the church.

This is a complex issue for us evangelicals. What do you think about “the decision” and its effects on mission? How do we balance out our theology and practice of conversion?

Such an observation is at the core of what Zizek offers to our look at evangelicalism. Here is Fitch’s description of why he chose to use Zizek’s work in his book.

Reading Zizek is like doing therapy upon an entire culture. Like few political theorists, he can get to the heart of a politic by asking what drives a people to believe certain things and then coalesce around these same beliefs. He understands that “ideology” takes place in the root practices we keep doing together even when they don’t make sense. He is able to keenly observe the contradictions that irrupt within a culture and/or political ideology and then help us see what drives people to ignore these contradictions in order to believe their ideologies all the more firmly.

Zizek’s benefit is in helping us understand gaps within our ideologies and practices and why we behave the way we do. That is a benefit indeed. So where does such analysis begin for us as evangelicals? It begins with looking for what Zizek calls Master Signifiers. “A master signifier is a conceptual object around which people give their allegiance thereby enabling a political group to form. It represents something to believe in, a badge which identifies us as part of this political cause.”

In our country we have numerous master signifiers. Take for instance our belief in freedom. We celebrate being the land of the free. It unites as as Americans. But do our ideas of freedom match up? Have we celebrated ourselves as being the land of the free while being segregationists? Do we even now give up our freedoms increasingly in the fight to hold onto them? That is the reality of master signifiers. They become banners we unite under even as we distance ourselves from the reality of them and suffer from a lack of unity in what they mean.

This is what Fitch is proposing for Inerrancy, the Decision for Christ, and a Christian Nation. These have become within evangelicalism master signifiers that unite us but don’t necessarily effect how we live nor promote helpful unity. They have become empty in many ways. If we become students of our culture we can see where the emptiness behind some of these banners exposes itself and leads us to question what we believe.

Stepping back from evangelicalism and looking at my own tribe, the Church of the Nazarene, I can see many ways in which this has shown itself. The banner we most like to unite under as Nazarenes is holiness. We consider ourselves to be unique as a Christian tribe because of our belief in personal holiness and entire sanctification. At the beginning of our denomination this did indeed set us apart in many ways. While many churches were de-emphasizing a transformed life as a Christians, Nazarenes were emphasizing a total transformation. This then demonstrated itself in different moral standards than the culture around us and many other Christians. But along the way the past 100 years, a call to holiness really became an empty signifier. So long as we said we were sanctified and we didn’t drink, cuss, smoke, or have sex, the rest of our lives didn’t matter so much. Social justice as part of holiness was lost. Communal practices that lead to holiness were lost. And over time those pieces of legislated morality such as drinking were lost. They haven’t been lost in our Manual, but they have been abandoned by many of our people. We still consider ourselves uniquely holy, but what evidence is there to back that up? Has this banner indeed become an empty master signifier?

What about in your own traditions? Can you identify master signifiers within your tradition or within evangelicalism that you would add to this list?