There’s an insidious malady among small-towners like myself, a tendency to pick at those of us who we believe grow bigger than their bib-overall britches. That attitude and behavior is very real, and in its origins it’s not all that far from the old line about a prophet not being without honor save in his own back 40.
I don’t want any part of that. I am proud of Siouxland’s most famous writer and prophet, the Rev. Robert Schuller, of California’s Crystal Cathedral fame. He’s made it big time, created an immense name for himself in the American evangelical world.
But the Crystal Cathedral’s windows are more than a little soiled these days. Several months ago, Schuller’s operation filed for bankruptcy because giving was far down as debt was up, which is to say dangerously.
Robert Schuller was born and reared just up the road, on the banks of the Floyd River, just north of Alton, a few miles outside the hamlet of Neukirk, Iowa. His farm family was hardly prosperous. I used to think that Orange City should buy the old Schuller house and turn it into some kind of museum, put it on a circle tour of Orange City and its environs, a stop for tourists on the town’s annual Tulip Time weekend. Probably won’t happen now.
I’ve heard people say that his mother was rather famously grouchy, one of those Calvinists who carried an healthy sense of her own darkness—as well as the darkness of her neighbors. The source of Schuller’s storied self-esteem gospel is often credited to his mentor, the Reverend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; but I like to think that he might well have learned it even earlier, nursing the hurts from a darkened family room on a vastly less-than-modest farmhouse here in Siouxland.
Way back in the 50’s, he and his family moved to southern California to do a church plant that blossomed into a model for evangelical enterprise, one of the first mega-churches in North America. Rumor has it that Billy Graham himself told Schuller to do a TV show; when he did, he started another “ministry” now common to others who achieve his status and renown.
Even here in the neighborhood, people don’t know what to make of him—and haven’t through the years; and it’s not just small-town, picket-fence, sniping. Was the man preaching the gospel, or was he simply filling America's bottomless emotional tanks with self-esteem? To a culture that is sometimes deeply over-indulged, Schuller could appear as the high priest of “feel-goodism.” For a man with a Calvinist soul, original sin sometimes seemed, in his message, non-existent. To some, even here where he grew up, he could easily appear a charlatan, even a false prophet.
And some of that is, I’m sure, cheap sniping. His ministry has undoubtedly been instrumental in changing thousands of lives. Once upon a time I met a Jewish woman who was converted to Christianity by Tammy Fay Bakker, a evangelist whose teary blessings made her seem to me, at least, a buffoon. Lots of people aren’t okay, and when a thoughtful, decent man comes along, a man of the cloth, and tells them they are—I’m Okay, You’re Okay-fashion—he’s going to rack up some disciples.
That Schuller saw a need for self-fulfillment in California and the nation is an indication of his sharp cultural vision and personal strength. Tons of people were never quite sure, however, that what he was preaching was the gospel.
As Christianity Today says in a recent wonderful editorial,
Schuller’s acumen wasn’t wrong, but his particular angle on American life has now looks somewhat misguided. Today, the Crystal Cathedral looks sort of, well, silly. Here’s the way CT puts it: “In an age deeply sensitive to energy conservation, a glass house of worship is a sinful extravagance. In a culture increasingly addicted to the self, the gospel of self-esteem is clearly part of the problem.”
Thus, cracks in the windows of the Crystal Cathedral beg one of Christendom’s most thorny problems: when does making the gospel “relevant” get downright silly? When does carving the good news up into sound bites or crafty catch-all phrases actually alter its reality?
“Robert Schuller is not the problem—contemporary evangelicalism is,” CT says. “The lesson is that our attempts to find and exploit a point of cultural contact inevitably end in bankruptcy.”
As Abraham Kuyper says in Near Unto God, our own birth into the radiance of Christ’s love is to most of us the most important moment or time in our lives. When we know that we are his, our understanding his being God is life-changing. It’s only natural that we want to share that moment with others.
But how God gets each of us to that point is never the same. God’s love comes to each of us individually and mysteriously. How it enters our lives is not something that can be ever easily replicated. His love is eternally larger than our preferences or even our most prescient cultural analysis.
In his world, even Tammy Fay Bakker wins souls—not because she’s right, but because the God of heaven and earth uses and chooses what he darn well pleases. He is God. We aren’t.
For some of us who doubted the good Reverend’s gospel for many years, his demise has a kind of told-you-so quality. I don’t want to dance on another’s grave. Undoubtedly, the good dominie from Neukirk, Iowa, did great work in Orange County, California, as well as around the world by way a ministry kingdom he built almost single-handedly.
There’s much to learn by way of his story—much, much to learn. And this morning's thanks are for what the Rev. Robert Schuller still can teach us, even if the windows of the Crystal Cathedral are dirty or broken.
I don’t want any part of that. I am proud of Siouxland’s most famous writer and prophet, the Rev. Robert Schuller, of California’s Crystal Cathedral fame. He’s made it big time, created an immense name for himself in the American evangelical world.
But the Crystal Cathedral’s windows are more than a little soiled these days. Several months ago, Schuller’s operation filed for bankruptcy because giving was far down as debt was up, which is to say dangerously.
Robert Schuller was born and reared just up the road, on the banks of the Floyd River, just north of Alton, a few miles outside the hamlet of Neukirk, Iowa. His farm family was hardly prosperous. I used to think that Orange City should buy the old Schuller house and turn it into some kind of museum, put it on a circle tour of Orange City and its environs, a stop for tourists on the town’s annual Tulip Time weekend. Probably won’t happen now.
I’ve heard people say that his mother was rather famously grouchy, one of those Calvinists who carried an healthy sense of her own darkness—as well as the darkness of her neighbors. The source of Schuller’s storied self-esteem gospel is often credited to his mentor, the Reverend Dr. Norman Vincent Peale; but I like to think that he might well have learned it even earlier, nursing the hurts from a darkened family room on a vastly less-than-modest farmhouse here in Siouxland.
Way back in the 50’s, he and his family moved to southern California to do a church plant that blossomed into a model for evangelical enterprise, one of the first mega-churches in North America. Rumor has it that Billy Graham himself told Schuller to do a TV show; when he did, he started another “ministry” now common to others who achieve his status and renown.
Even here in the neighborhood, people don’t know what to make of him—and haven’t through the years; and it’s not just small-town, picket-fence, sniping. Was the man preaching the gospel, or was he simply filling America's bottomless emotional tanks with self-esteem? To a culture that is sometimes deeply over-indulged, Schuller could appear as the high priest of “feel-goodism.” For a man with a Calvinist soul, original sin sometimes seemed, in his message, non-existent. To some, even here where he grew up, he could easily appear a charlatan, even a false prophet.
And some of that is, I’m sure, cheap sniping. His ministry has undoubtedly been instrumental in changing thousands of lives. Once upon a time I met a Jewish woman who was converted to Christianity by Tammy Fay Bakker, a evangelist whose teary blessings made her seem to me, at least, a buffoon. Lots of people aren’t okay, and when a thoughtful, decent man comes along, a man of the cloth, and tells them they are—I’m Okay, You’re Okay-fashion—he’s going to rack up some disciples.
That Schuller saw a need for self-fulfillment in California and the nation is an indication of his sharp cultural vision and personal strength. Tons of people were never quite sure, however, that what he was preaching was the gospel.
As Christianity Today says in a recent wonderful editorial,
The most scathing critique of this general cultural mood was from Christopher Lasch, who noted, particularly in The Culture of Narcissism, that the new therapeutic culture was leaving people trapped and isolated in the self.
It's like building a state-of-the-art structure. Technology moves at such a rapid pace that as soon as you move into the new building, you immediately find yourself stuck with an architecture that is already technologically dated, if only in small degrees at first. It isn't long before another developer announces plans for something even more state-of-the-art.
Schuller’s acumen wasn’t wrong, but his particular angle on American life has now looks somewhat misguided. Today, the Crystal Cathedral looks sort of, well, silly. Here’s the way CT puts it: “In an age deeply sensitive to energy conservation, a glass house of worship is a sinful extravagance. In a culture increasingly addicted to the self, the gospel of self-esteem is clearly part of the problem.”
Thus, cracks in the windows of the Crystal Cathedral beg one of Christendom’s most thorny problems: when does making the gospel “relevant” get downright silly? When does carving the good news up into sound bites or crafty catch-all phrases actually alter its reality?
“Robert Schuller is not the problem—contemporary evangelicalism is,” CT says. “The lesson is that our attempts to find and exploit a point of cultural contact inevitably end in bankruptcy.”
As Abraham Kuyper says in Near Unto God, our own birth into the radiance of Christ’s love is to most of us the most important moment or time in our lives. When we know that we are his, our understanding his being God is life-changing. It’s only natural that we want to share that moment with others.
But how God gets each of us to that point is never the same. God’s love comes to each of us individually and mysteriously. How it enters our lives is not something that can be ever easily replicated. His love is eternally larger than our preferences or even our most prescient cultural analysis.
In his world, even Tammy Fay Bakker wins souls—not because she’s right, but because the God of heaven and earth uses and chooses what he darn well pleases. He is God. We aren’t.
For some of us who doubted the good Reverend’s gospel for many years, his demise has a kind of told-you-so quality. I don’t want to dance on another’s grave. Undoubtedly, the good dominie from Neukirk, Iowa, did great work in Orange County, California, as well as around the world by way a ministry kingdom he built almost single-handedly.
There’s much to learn by way of his story—much, much to learn. And this morning's thanks are for what the Rev. Robert Schuller still can teach us, even if the windows of the Crystal Cathedral are dirty or broken.
1 comment:
I think the problem with Calvinists is that everything has to happen mysteriously, when in fact, everything I know about God is blatantly obvious.
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