The Biggest Theological Changes I’ve Seen in My Lifetime

Perhaps this needs to be seven posts rather than one, but at this point I am just listing and briefly describing what I consider to be the biggest theological changes I have seen in my lifetime—and these are not my personal shifts but what I’ve observed in the broad spectrum of Christianity. 

#1 – Widespread rejection of Hell. I list this first because of its impact on the following changes. Emphasis on Hell was not only long the emphasis of Protestantism but of Roman Catholicism as well.

One of the most well-known Protestant sermons was Jonathan Edwards’s 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.” And early in the 19^th century, revivalist preachers in the U.S. became known for their “fire and brimstone” sermons. That was still quite common when I was a boy/youth.

The Roman Catholic Church also taught for centuries that everyone who was not baptized as a Catholic was bound to go to Hell when they died. That position was drastically changed by the Second Vatican Council (1962~65).

And while emphasis on Hell is still much a part of conservative evangelicalism, in Protestant Christianity at large that emphasis has been quite widely rejected, or at least conspicuously ignored.

#2 – Growing de-emphasis on Heaven. For far different reasons, but related to the above, is what seems to me to be a significant decrease in the emphasis on Heaven in 21^st century Christianity. Heaven isn’t particularly denied, it just isn’t talked about nearly as much as it used to be.

The Great Awakenings and evangelical preaching of the 18^th~20^th centuries was about being “saved” from Hell in order to go to Heaven after death. In the early decades of my life the “afterlife” was of primary concern in most of Christianity, but that no longer seems to be the case.  

#3 – Drastic decrease in world mission activity. Although it was never just for that purpose, the desire to save people from Hell in order that they could go to Heaven was long a major motivation for world mission activity of most Christian denominations.

When I went to Japan as a Baptist missionary in 1966, there were not only conservative missionaries of various denominations, many of which were more conservative than Southern Baptists then, but also many from the more “liberal” Protestant denominations as well as Roman Catholics.

Some of the most prominent Christian schools in Japan were founded by Catholic, Anglican, and “mainstream” Protestant missionaries. But by the time I left Japan in 2004, there were hardly any Christian missionaries left other than Southern Baptists and other conservative evangelicals.

#4 – Emphasis on life in the here and now. Closely related to #2 above is the growing emphasis on the importance of life in this world now. Even the understanding of the Kingdom of God has broadly changed from being focused upon the world to come to a feature of the world we live in now.

Contemporary Christianity seems to have increasingly embraced the traditional Jewish position of “salvation” not being “about going to heaven after death but about the flourishing of life in the present.”*

For example, emphasis on flourishing in the present has for many years now been a part of the reflections of two popular theological thinkers I greatly respect, “emergent” Protestant public theologian and author Brian McLaren and Catholic (Franciscan) priest Richard Rohr.

5) De-emphasis and even rejection of substitutionary atonement. Since the blog post I made six years ago today was about that doctrinal belief (see here), I won’t elaborate on this point more now.

6) Change in views related to sexual ethics. Because of the perceived clear positions of the Bible and the teachings of the Church, both Protestant and Catholic Christianity long-held negative judgments against divorce, cohabitation, and homosexuality.

While there were always many “deviations,” Christianity long held to a strong belief in the sanctity of marriage, which meant lifetime monogamous marriage of a man and a woman with no intimate sexual relations condoned outside of such a marriage.

In spite of strong emphasis on the traditional position by some Christians, broadly speaking, to a large extent Christianity now seems no longer to speak out against divorce or pre-marital sexual relations, and there continues to be greater acceptance of the rights of LGBTQ people.

  7) Growth in ecumenical relations, including deep ecumenism. There is a long history of Christian ecumenism—but an even longer history of Christian denominational “tribalism,” which is what I mostly saw in my younger years.

But during my lifetime there has been not only an ever-increasing move toward Christian denominations working together, a movement from exclusivity to inclusivity, but also an increase in what is sometimes called “deep ecumenism,” Christianity working with other religious traditions.**

What would you readers add or subtract from this list? And which of these do I need to write more about?

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* These words are from Jeorg Rieger in his book Theology in the Capitalocene (2022), which I plan to introduce more fully in the last blog post planned for this month.

** According to Chat GPT, “deep ecumenism” is a term coined by Wayne Teasdale (1945~2004), a Catholic lay monk. His book The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (1999) “is considered a seminal work in the field of deep ecumenism.” (I think I heard that term before 1999, though.)

Matthew Fox, former Catholic and now Episcopal priest, posted a “daily meditation” entitled “What Is Deep Ecumenism? Why Now?” on Oct. 18, 2021. 

Is the Secularization of Society Beyond Doubt?

This post’s title comes from a new book by three sociologists and some of the article’s content is my reflection on a new novel. 

Beyond Doubt: The Secularization of Society (2023) is a scholarly work authored by three sociologists.* One of the three is Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.

Many large, public universities have Religious Studies departments. For example, my daughter Karen is the head of the Department of Religious Studies and Classics at the University of Arizona.

But in 2011, Zuckerman founded the Secular Studies department at Pitzer, the first college academic program in the nation dedicated exclusively to studying secular culture.

Zuckerman is also the author of several books on secularity, including Living the Secular Life (2014) and What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living An Ethical Life (2019).

He can also be found on YouTube, speaking on various secular or agnostic/atheist sites. For example, here is the link to his March 31 talk titled “How Secular Values Will Save the USA.” It is an attractively presented talk, and I agreed with much of what he said.

However, I was also “turned off” by that talk: even though he is an academic, Zukerman came across as an “evangelist” for secularity and presented misleading “facts.” As often happens, he presented the best examples of secular morality and the worst examples of religious morality. 

Heaven & Earth (2023) is a challenging novel by Joshua Senter (b. 1979), who was born in the Missouri Ozarks and reared/homeschooled in a fundamentalist Christian home

.Senter’s book is about a disgraced megachurch pastor Sam, who was born near Conway, Mo., a small town on Route 66 and about 40 miles west of the author’s hometown.

But even more, Heaven & Earth is about Sam’s wife Ruth, who was abandoned by her hippy mother and raised by her devout Christian grandmother. Until the last chapter, Ruth is also an exemplary Christian, but she jettisons her faith to embrace the secular worldview of her mother.

The sociologists’ book documents how religion is currently losing out to secularization and Senter’s novel depicts how that happened in the case of one particular Christian believer. 

Religion is not always good and secularization is not always bad (as many religionists imply). But the opposite is also true: secularization (=secularism) is not always good and religion (=faith) is not always bad (as many secularists imply).

As I have often emphasized, secularization is better than secularism and faith is superior to religion.**

I agree with the sociologists: the further secularization of American society is quite surely “beyond doubt.” But that is not necessarily a bad thing. Secularization is an antidote to the current widespread advocacy of (White) Christian nationalism, and it helps ensure the freedom of religion for all citizens.

And I agree with the strong emphasis of Ruth’s mother in the novel: we need to embrace the joy of living now instead of focusing only the “life beyond.”

However, I strongly disagree with Zuckerman’s insistence that secular morality is (always) good and religious morality is (always) bad. He even says that it is not only possible to be moral without belief in God, theistic belief is often a barrier to morality.

Zuckerman’s negative view of religion seems to be based largely on the errors and excesses of conservative (fundamentalist) Christianity. (Sad to say, Pat Robertson, who died on June 8, did incalculable damage to U.S. Christianity.) But Zuckerman mostly neglects other forms of Christianity.

And in the novel, an atheistic nurse tells Ruth that “living for today as opposed to living for some future grandeur [that is, Heaven]” is a gift, “a wonderful realization. Life is suddenly so potent” (p. 217). That is the view that Ruth adopts at the end of the book.

But it doesn’t have to be either/or. It is certainly possible to believe in Heaven and to fully appreciate/enjoy the grandeur of life in this world now.

Perhaps everything is sacred (religious) and nothing is profane (secular), as Fr. Richard Rohr contends in his insightful “daily meditation” for June 12. 

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* The authors are Isabella Kasselstrand, Phil Zuckerman,  and Ryan T. Cragun. Zuckerman (b. 1969) is the oldest and most prominent of the three.

** See, for example, my 2/19/20 blog post titled “Affirming Secularization, Opposing Secularism” and “Faith and Religion Are Not the Same,” my 6/10/18 post.

Isabel’s Testimony: The Power of Faith

In my March 25, 2021, blog post, I wrote briefly about Rachel (Clark) Seat, my great-grandmother. This article is about Great-grandma Rachel’s oldest daughter Isabel (also spelled Isabelle) and her strong faith expressed shortly before her death 132 years ago tomorrow, on February 13, 1890.

Introducing Isabel

Isabel Tempe Seat was born in rural Worth County, Missouri, on September 9, 1871. She was the first child of William and Rachel Seat, who had also been born in the same township.

When she was still 17, Isabel married Jake Williams, and before long they were expecting their first child. Leslie was born on January 25, 1890. But before three weeks had passed, his 18-year-old mother Isabel died of complications from childbirth.

Three days before her untimely death, a sizeable number of relatives and friends gathered around her deathbed where she repeatedly urged people to become Christian believers so that they would later be reunited in Heaven.

Isabel’s Testimony

A document titled “The Last Words of Isabel Williams” has been preserved in the Seat family. I don’t know who initially put those words in writing, but the first copy I saw was one made by Mary Rachel Seat, Isabel’s niece and my “wonderful aunt,” as I called her in my 6/25/16 blog post.

The first line of that document says, “Isabel Williams, while on her deathbed and there being several present, asked them to talk.” But actually, Isabel wanted to talk to them, and most of the document (which can be read in full here) are the words of testimony and entreaty given to many people.

I don’t know how so many people could have been present under one roof—and probably they were not all there at the same time—but Isabel called for them to come one or two at a time for her to speak to them from the depths of her Christian faith.

Her most often spoken words were, “Will you promise me you will meet me in Heaven?”—or words to that effect. And, evidently, many did make such a promise, including many who had not been Christian believers, or active Christians, at the time they heard Isabel’s question and plea to them.

Several of the people didn’t live close to New Hope Church where Isabel and her close family were members, so not long after her death, a new church was started—and given the name Isabelle Church. (It was about 3½ miles northeast of New Hope, a fair distance when traveling by horse and buggy.)

The Isabelle church building has been torn down in that sparsely populated part of northwest Missouri, but the cemetery is still there—and just a year and a half ago, J.W. Harding, a man I knew fairly well, was buried there. The picture below (taken several years ago) is of the entrance to the cemetery.  

Isabel’s Faith

Isabel’s belief/certainty about going to Heaven after death was not at all unusual for someone living when and where she did—although perhaps it was a bit unusual for someone only 18 years old to express that faith so strongly.

Isabel’s parents lived within easy walking distance from New Hope Church after it was constructed in 1877-78, and she, no doubt, attended services every Sunday morning and evening with her mother during her girlhood years. (Isabel’s father, sadly, died in 1880 on Isabel’s ninth birthday.)

My previous blog post was partly about common sense, and I asserted that “common sense” can be called that only for those who see the world through the same, or quite similar, “conceptual lenses.”

The conceptual lenses of most people in Worth County, Mo., in 1890 were those fashioned by evangelical Protestant Christians. While certainly everyone was not a professing or active Christian believer, Christianity as understood by Baptists and other evangelicals was the dominant culture.

Certainly, there were many things about Christianity that Isabel still needed to learn—but who can say that her faith that she expressed so powerfully was wrong?

Isabel’s faith was, without doubt, highly comforting to her. But who can say, and on what basis, that her powerful Christian faith wasn’t also basically true?

TTT #7 The Kingdom of God is More about Society than about Individuals

Consider with me one more article concerning the Kingdom of God before we move to a different topic in the next/eighth chapter of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT).

Who Is “You”?

Unlike many (most?) languages of the world, in English there is no difference between the singular and plural second person pronoun. That is, you can refer to one person or to two—or many more—people.

Partly for that reason, there has been some misunderstanding of the Bible for those who read it exclusively (or even primarily) in English. Despite being able after seminary to read the New Testament in Greek, to a degree, I usually just read the English translation for devotional use and even for sermon preparation before going to Japan.

As I began to prepare sermons in Japanese, however, over and over again I noticed that passages I had always thought of as speaking to individuals were, indeed, speaking to multiple people, to a community, for you was plural in Japanese just as it is in Greek.

“You” in the KoG

Western Christianity has usually placed far more emphasis on individuals than on society. Accordingly, individualistic interpretation of the Bible emphasizes that God loves me, Jesus died for me, I can be saved through faith in Jesus, and when I die I will go to Heaven.

To be sure, that is an important part of the Gospel message—but it is certainly not the only, or maybe in the larger scheme of things, the most important.

Emergent church leader Brian D. McLaren has importantly emphasized this point in recent years—but, unfortunately, many Christians don’t seem to have gotten the point yet.

One of McLaren’s books is The Secret Message of Jesus (2006). That “secret message” he elucidated shouldn’t have been so secret, for it was, after all, a central teaching of Jesus.

What was that teaching? It was primarily not about isolated individuals but about the kingdom of God, a new society populated by people who form a community of faith.  

“You” and the KoG Here and Now

Not only has the Western understanding of the kingdom of God often been individualistic, it has also often been other-worldly. By “other-worldly” I mean, of course, that it has been more about life after death rather than about life now on earth.

The “pie in the sky by and by” sort of thinking was used by some, and perhaps many, slaveholders in the nineteenth century to mollify their slaves. And to some degree, the same kind of thinking was utilized by white Christians to keep African Americans satisfied with their inferior status for a century, and more, following the end of the Civil War.

Martin Luther King, Jr., alludes to that sad situation in his powerful book Why We Can’t Wait (1963). He writes, “To the ministers I stressed the need for a social gospel to supplement the gospel of individual salvation.”

King says that he also rejected religion which “prompts a minister to extol the glories of Heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell.”

Throughout his book introduced above, McLaren emphasizes that "the secret message of Jesus isn’t primarily about ‘heaven after you die.’ It doesn’t give us an exit ramp or escape hatch from this world; rather it thrusts us back into the here and now so we can be part of God’s dreams for planet Earth coming true" (p. 183).

So surely, one of the true things that everyone needs to know now is that the kingdom of God is more about society than about individuals and is about now as well as the future.

Hawking on Heaven

Stephen Hawking (b. 1942), the British physicist and cosmologist, is one of the best-known academic celebrities on earth. He may also be one of the most brilliant scientists on the planet.

As you have probably heard, Hawking recently made the news by saying, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian on May 15, that “There is no heaven; it’s a fairy story.”

I have not read, and likely could not understand, Hawking’s technical books, such as his Information Loss in Black Holes (2005). But I have read, and led a discussion on (with the teachers at Seinan Gakuin High School), Hawking’s popular book A Brief History of Time (1988), a bestseller that has sold more than ten million copies.

In his most recent book The Grand Design (2010, coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow), Hawking argues that invoking God is not necessary to explain the origins of the universe, and that the Big Bang is a consequence of the laws of physics alone. In response to criticism, Hawking has said, “One can’t prove that God doesn't exist, but science makes God unnecessary.” So, not unsurprisingly, Hawking says he does not believe in God.

Having rejected God, Hawking now clearly denies the reality of Heaven. (I capitalize Heaven, for I am using the word in reference to a “place” and not just as a metaphorical concept.) In his interview with the Guardian, he commented, “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

Since he does not believe in Heaven, Hawking “emphasizes the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives,” according to the Guardian.

Back in March, I wrote about “Bell on Hell” (link here). Now, what can we say about Hawking on Heaven? And what should we think and do if Hawking should be right (even though I don’t think he is)?

We have to appreciate Hawking’s bravery in following what he thinks to be true rather than what would be more comforting. And shouldn’t we also appreciate his emphasis on making good use of our lives now? We have heard of people “so heavenly minded they were of no earthly good.” But shouldn’t those who are followers of Jesus love God and love our neighbors for their sake, and now, whether there is a Heaven or not?

And on this Memorial Day, people who visit the graves of their loved ones don’t do so because they are specifically thinking of them being in Heaven. At the cemetery we usually think of our loved ones’ life on earth, giving thanks for their lives and legacy. And that we can, and should, do whether there is a Heaven or not.

While Heaven is not nearly as important to me as it long was, I do believe in Heaven. And I think it is a “crying shame” that Hawking doesn’t, that he doesn’t have anything to look forward to after the death of his brilliant computer-brain other than the leaving of a significant intellectual legacy.

But I don’t know that I would, or should, live any differently even if Hawking should be right in his views about Heaven.

More Thoughts about the Afterlife

That noted theologian Woody Allen is reported to have said, “Rather than live on in the hearts and minds of my fellow men, I’d prefer to live on in my apartment.” Unlike Allen, I have the hope, and the firm confidence, that after death I will “live on” in Heaven and not just in the hearts and minds of others. But similar to Allen, right now I prefer to live on in my home on Canterbury Lane.

On March 20 I posted “Thoughts about the Afterlife.” After reading the chapters on old age and death in Harold Kushner’s book Conquering Fear, I have been thinking more about the afterlife—but now with reference to myself rather than my parents. (The 3/20 posting was the day before what would have been my father’s ninety-fifth birthday.) 

I was thinking about this matter while jogging the other day, and the words of the old gospel song “O That Will Be Glory For Me” came to mind. Two of the verses declare, “When all my labors and trials are o’er, / And I am safe on that beautiful shore, / Just to be near the dear Lord I adore, / Will through the ages be glory for me.” And “Friends will be there I have loved long ago; / Joy like a river around me will flow; Yet just a smile from my Savior, I know, / Will through the ages be glory for me” (words by Charles H. Gabriel, 1856-1932; first published in 1900). 

In my forties, I probably found considerable significance in those words, but for some reason I don’t find them particularly helpful now. At this time I want to make the most of living here and now rather than focusing on what will happen after death. And at the end of my life, whether thirty days or thirty years from now, I would like for the focus of the funeral to be about life on this earth rather than about my life in Heaven. 

Again, I say this not because I don’t believe in Heaven; rather, for whatever reason, I just don’t seem that interested in Heaven or in any hurry to get there. Like before, maybe it is because of my inability to get any good grasp of what life in Heaven will really be like. At any rate, my interest and emphasis at this time is how to live meaningfully right now, as a fallible human being on earth. And maybe that is as it should be. 

Jesus, after all, didn’t talk a lot about Heaven. He talked about the Kingdom of God. Even though Christianity has often interpreted the Kingdom as beginning at the end times, for Jesus it was primarily his vision for here and now. And Jesus’ emphasis seems to have been upon the existence of a “beloved community,” not just the bliss of isolated individuals.

Thoughts about the Afterlife

Tomorrow, March 21, would be my father’s 95^th birthday, had he not passed away in the summer of 2007. Even though it has been more than two and a half years since his passing, I still miss him. And I am surprised at how often I dream about him, including a dream in the last week. They are always pleasant dreams of us talking and doing things together.

My father was a “common” man; he had no formal schooling beyond high school and spent most of his life working as a farmer. He lived his life in modest houses and indulged in very few luxuries. But he lived a good, fulfilling life.

Hollis Seat, my father, was an active churchman most of his life, especially in the sixty-plus years after moving back to Worth County (MO), where he was born, in the fall of 1945. While farming was his occupation, and he was a good farmer, he spent a lot of time and energy serving Christ through the church; for decades he was a deacon and Sunday School teacher. Through the years he joyfully gave a tithe of his income, and more, for the work of the church.

If anyone goes to Heaven when they die, I have no doubt whatsoever that my father did. But in the time since his passing, it has seemed somewhat strange that I have found little “comfort” in thinking about my father in Heaven.

Maybe it is because it is so hard to visualize exactly what kind of existence a person has in Heaven—there surely are not literal streets paved with gold and gates made of pearls there. Maybe it is because there is so little talk about Heaven now in the society in which we live or even at church. But for whatever reason, I have been surprised in these last two and a half years that I have not found more meaning in thinking of my father (and mother, who passed away in February 2008) in Heaven.

More than being “comforted” by thinking of my father (and mother) in Heaven, I find significance in thinking about the positive influence he had not only on the lives of his children and grandchildren, but on many people in the churches he was a part of and in the communities where he lived.

Maybe Heaven is more meaningful for the loved ones of those who die much younger than my father did or of those who have not lived as good a life as he did. At any rate, as I think of my father now, more than enjoying comforting thoughts because of belief in the afterlife, I find solace in, and am grateful for, the memories of his long life well lived in this world.