The Church as Community of Reformers

THE CHURCH AS A COMMUNITY OF REFORMERS: Originally Submitted for Academic Credit at Perkins School of Theology Fall 2023.

This essay utilizes Dr. Nancy Ammerman’s theory that conversations provide the necessary conditions for certain perspectives or opinions about reality to remain possible based on one’s community, identity, and social context more broadly. Ammerman’s theory was developed as a revision and critique of Peter Berger’s idea coined ‘plausibility structures.’[1] Ammerman’s ‘plausibility structures’ in conjunction with arguments developed by Christ & Culture (1951) and The Ethics of Tainted Legacies (2022) provide a sufficient foundation to argue that the church ought to be a community of reformers. As a community of reformers, the church ought to construct the plausibility structures that encourage Christians to care for victims of specific violation, as well as the systemically oppressed and to deconstruct the plausibility structures that are complicit in encouraging violators and systemic injustices within the church and society at large.

Plausibility Structures, Conversations, and Christian Identity

Dr. Nancy Ammerman Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Religion at Boston University examined fundamentalism and plausibility structures in her 1987 publication Bible Believers.[2] This ultimately led to the development of her theory of Religious Identity that is upheld through the conversational plausibility structures.[3] She further identifies that religious identity is influenced more heavily by the conversations one has more than one’s participation in a particular religious service.[4] These conclusions necessitate an examination of Ammerman’s theory as it relates to Christian Identity?

??????????? Ammerman’s construction of plausibility structures yields the notion that a Christian’s time spent in conversation significantly influences their religious identity. Based on this conclusion, one could argue that plausibility structures support a church’s social reality. Based on these two statements one can say that a church, as a community of Christians, has a responsibility to be aware of the plausibility structures it may be constructing or deconstructing. Awareness of these plausibility structures, however, is not a sufficient description of a church’s responsibility toward society. I propose at this juncture to turn to H.R. Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture and Karen Guth’s the Ethics of Tainted Legacies to construct a vision of how a churches theology and response to tainted legacies interacts with a church’s responsibility toward the plausibility structures of society.

The Church that Transforms and Reforms Culture

In Christ and Culture, H. Richard Niebuhr offered five classifications of how Christians engage culture. In The Ethics of Tainted Legacies, Karen Guth presents a typology of six responses to morally injurious traditions or legacies, which she calls ‘tainted’. Interweaving Niebuhr’s and Guth’s frameworks and arguments helps construct the Church’s responsibility toward the plausibility structures in society.

The five classifications in Christ and Culture are:

• Christ against Culture
• Christ of Culture
• Christ above Culture
• Christ and Culture in Paradox
• Christ the Transformer of Culture[5]

The six responses in The Ethics of Tainted Legacies are:

• Denial
• Separation
• Abolition
• Revision
• Redemption
• Reformation[6] ?

In Christ & Culture Niebuhr argues that the theology of Christ the Transformer of Culture is ultimately correct. Similarly in The Ethics of Tainted Legacies Guth argues in favor of the reformer response. Both these arguments advocate for a definition of a church’s theology or practice that yields the transformation of society, including plausibility structures. What can churches learn about interacting with society from Niebuhr’s Christ that transforms culture and Guth’s reformer as a response to morally injurious traditions?

In Niebuhr’s “Christ the Transformer of Culture” there are three identified theological convictions: 1) creation is a major theme of the story of God that is not “overpowered by or overpowering the idea of atonement.”[7] 2) The fall of humanity is distinguished from creation and is instead an articulation of corruption to signify that the fall is a reversal of creation.[8] 3) History is a “story of God’s mighty deeds and humanities responses to them.”[9]

Guth’s Reformer response is characterized by three principal behaviors: 1) the pursuit of retrospectively seeking to repair legacies that come from morally injurious traditions.[10] 2) The present care for those suffering from specific violation and systemic oppression.[11] 3) The prospective enhancement of traditional resources within morally injurious traditions for future generations.[12]

Based on Niebuhr and Guth a few things are clear. Churches, as communities of Christians, have a responsibility to recognize that both God and humanity play a role in the dramatic historical narrative of the world. By placing equal weight on creation and atonement churches foster conversational atmospheres that produce an awareness of current plausibility structures and tainted legacies. The recognition of the fall as a form of corruption provides a foundation for identifying which plausibility structures are contributing to tainted legacies. Reformation results from the church’s transforming of plausibility structures contributing to tainted legacies. This reformation is incomplete if the church is not also presently administering aid to the victimized and the oppressed.

How does a church transition from merely talking about these things, to decisive acts of reformation? The answer I want to offer is found through a discussion of Cody J. Sanders’ Queer Lessons for Churches on The Straight and Narrow. Furthermore, I believe the answer is found through a separate question. What does a community look like the people learn together?

Cody Sanders and The Christian Church as a Learning Community

People who learn together within a particular community ask questions that afford themselves the best possible opportunity to learn from other communities. This is an essential quality for any church that wants to learn together as a community. Further, a church or Christian community that is striving to follow the transformative Christ as a community of reformers can only do so effectively by engaging other communities.

Stepping outside one’s own immediate sense of community to engage with others often reveals two vital pieces of information for any community of reformers. 1) Who is being harmed or facing systemic injustice in our area? 2) What are people doing right now to try and bring positive change for those experiencing harm or injustice both now and in the future?

Armed with this information any church can begin to follow the path carved out by Cody J. Sanders’ introduction to Queer Lessons for Churches on The Straight and Narrow. Anecdotally, Sanders advocates that communities who are experiencing suffering and injustice in the present have a deeper understanding about many things in life that 1st century Christians also understood.[13] So, if a church has any desire to draw closer to what was intimately known by early Christians, communities facing harm and injustice are an invaluable source of learning.[14]

This, identification of harm, injustice, and lessons to be learned is only the beginning of a church’s work within a larger communal context. The hard work of reforming systems and institutions and following the culture transforming Christ must now begin. This work is two-fold.

Churches must begin asking questions of those who are marginalized and oppressed to gain a better understanding of a few immediate things. 1) The specific violations happening to victims in the community.[15] 2) The systems that are negatively impacting the marginalized within the community.[16] 3) The plausibility structures that support and generate the phenomena within the prior two categories.

The third category of understanding that develops as one engages with the marginalized and the oppressed is where the church should focus its long-term efforts, even as it seeks to provide comfort and immediate aid to those suffering in the present. A church can accomplish the long-term goal of cultural transformation and institutional reformation through a two-fold response based on the information in the third category.

The Christian community must begin deconstructing the plausibility structures that are contributing to specific violation and systemic injustice while simultaneously creatively contributing and sometimes even daring to start conversations that generate positive social change and cease the experience of specific violation and systemic injustice while continuing to care for those who have been impacted by what has already transpired.

Conclusion

What does it take to deconstruct a harmful and systemically complicit conversational plausibility structure? First and foremost, as we have seen, it requires an understanding of how our conversations play a role in the process of social construction as well as our own identity.[17] Secondly, conversational plausibility deconstruction requires a specific and active choice to become aware of the systems and specific harms that one is unintentionally or unknowingly facilitating through one’s conversations and social patterns.[18]

Finally, it requires a proactive effort to stop using the language, questions, or social patterns that have been identified to immediately aid those around you as well as activist effort alongside groups like Black Lives Matter, or The Trevor Project, or any other group focused on reducing the experience of harm and systemic injustice for the marginalized and the oppressed.

A cautionary note is needed at this point. This work of plausibility transformation and systemic reformation by the Christian community requires a careful evaluation of one’s immediate context and region. The marginalized and the oppressed may look different in a church community made up of a single racial identity or sexual orientation, or perhaps it might be prudent to investigate which groups have experienced marginalization historically in your region.

Both Rodney Clapp and Miroslav Volf engage some of the challenges that Christian Identity faces in the context of a pluralistic society, and while these challenges are not the focus of this essay and constructive proposal their work is worth mentioning by way of conclusion. Society is not monolithic and is a dynamic and fluid reality in which all Christians participate.[19] Therefore when the Christian community seeks to live out a discipleship of the transformative Christ as a community of reformers it must take great care to utilize an intersectional lens to richly meet the challenges of a pluralistic and dynamic society. The church must not merely be responsive but proactive in attempting to identify where harm may come from in the future and take active steps to reform the trajectory of current plausibility structures to mitigate the harm of victims in the future.

[1] To see a fuller engagement of the reception history of Peter Berger’s Sacred Canopy see Hjelm, Titus, ed.?Peter L. Berger and the Sociology of Religion: 50 Years after the Sacred Canopy. London; Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. For Ammerman’s theory specifically, see “From Canopies to Conversations: the continuing significance of plausibility structures” in Peter Berger and the Sacred Canopy. 31

[2] Ammerman, “From Canopies to Conversations.” 31

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] H. R. Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, (New York: Harper Collins Publishing Corps, 2001), vii-viii.

[6] Karen Guth, The Ethics of Tainted Legacies, (Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press;?2022), 62-64.

[7] Niebuhr, Christ & Culture, (2001), 191-193.

[8] Ibid, 193-194.

[9] Ibid, 194.

[10] Guth, The Ethics of Tainted Legacies, (2022), 63-64; 248.

[11] Ibid, 63-64.

[12] Ibid, 63-64; 248.

[13] Sanders, Cody J. Queer Lessons for the Church on the Straight and Narrow, (Mason, GA: Faithlab 2013), 43-44.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Guth, The Ethics of Tainted Legacies, (2022); Sanders, Queer Lessons for the Church on the Straight and Narrow, (2013).

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ammerman, 31.

[18] Ammerman, 31.

[19] Volf, Miroslav. A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good, (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2011).

Bibliography

Berger, Peter L.?The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books, 1990.

Clapp, Rodney. A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society. Downers Grove, Ill: intervarsity Press, 1996.

Emerson, Michael O., and Christian Smith. Divided by Faith Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2000.

Guth, Karen V.?The Ethics of Tainted Legacies: Human Flourishing after Traumatic Pasts. Cambridge, United Kingdom; Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Hjelm, Titus, ed.?Peter L. Berger and the Sociology of Religion: 50 Years after the Sacred Canopy. London; Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ & Culture. New York: Harper Collins Publishing Corps, 2001.

Sanders, Cody J.?Queer Lessons for Churches on the Straight & Narrow : What All Christians Can Learn from LGBTQ Lives. Macon, Ga: Faithlab, 2013.

Tonstad, Linn Marie. Queer Theology: Beyond Apologetics. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2018.

Volf, Miroslav. A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good. Grand Rapids, Mich: Brazos Press, 2011.

Westphal, Merold, and James Smith. Whose Community? Which Interpretation? (The Church and Postmodern Culture): Philosophical Hermeneutics for the Church. Ada, MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2009.