Recovering Evangelicals

#200 – What do we now do with Philip Yancey’s books?

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Do we burn them all, or can we redact the problematic parts? Or do we take the path that involves his confession, repentance and restoration?

Last week, we explored our own responses, as well as those of nine anonymous listeners/friends, to the sex scandals involving Christian authors and theologians.  This began as a direct response to the recent revelation of Philip Yancey’s extramarital affair, but we also talked about parallel stories in the lives of Karl Barth, Ravi Zacharias, Bruxy Cavey and King David.  The main question motivating our discussion was: what do we now do with the intellectual contributions they gave us?  Do we burn them all? Can we sift through them and redact the problematic ones/parts?

To get more informed opinion on this, we brought in Dr. Sarah Shin (who wrote a scholarly article in a reputable journal specifically on this very question) as well as Dr. Karen Swallow Prior (a highly sought out thinker and speaker in the Evangelical community who has also written complementary pieces on this problem). 

We first introduced our audience to Dr. Shin’s paper, which focused specifically on Karl Barth and John Howard Yoder, both of whom had tremendous influence on the development of Christian theology in the early 20th century, despite having scandalously breached traditional Christian sexual ethics.  This paper became a platform on which to discuss our response to the sexual indiscretions of other Christian leaders like Philip Yancey, Ravi Zacharias, or King David, as well as the Christian community’s response to parallel problems such as racial abuse.  Her paper highlighted several points:

  • the need to develop approaches to dealing with the writings/teachings of the problematic author (a “type 1” problem) as well as approaches that target the Christian practices and institutions which helped create and/or propagate the bad theology (a “type 2” problem);
    • the need to discern between the “value” versus the “influence” of these authors/teachings;
      • balancing the value of keeping their works versus propagating the suffering that the author and/or their work caused;
        • the similarities between the historical white-washing and revisionism in response to the sex scandals (burning their books) and the response to slavery and racial injustice (tearing down their statues)

          • We dug deeper into the “type 2” problem/approach by exploring a variety of systemic issues that may be at play here:

          • our tendency to put Christian authors/leaders on pedestals, giving them celebrity status and idolizing them;
            • our binary approach to either discarding or  hanging on to their teachings, without putting in the time and energy of deliberating and deconstructing them;
              • our need to have certainty and simplicity regarding complex matters, and absolute strength/purity in our leaders;
                • our tendency to avoid uncomfortable truths and live in ignorance (“if we can’t remember together, then we can’t reform ourselves”);
                  • the Christian community’s tendency to teach and equip its adherents to compartmentalize incongruities, rationalize away paradoxes, suppress cognitive dissonance, and hide uncomfortable truths and private indiscretions.

                    • We also talked briefly about the paths to restitution and restoration, and made comparisons between King David, Karl Barth, Ravi Zacharias, and Philip Yancey with respect to how they may or may not have acknowledged the breach, apologized, offered restitution, and/or been restored.

                    As always, tell us what you think!

                    You can find more about our guests at Dr. Sarah Shin’s Instagram page and Dr. Karen Swallow Prior’s web-page.

                    If you enjoyed this episode, you might also be interested in our mini-series asking: Why is Christianity so hung up about sex?

                    Episode image by Andrew. Thanks Andrew!

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                    Recovering EvangelicalsBy Luke Jeffrey Janssen
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