Perhaps the only connecting point between two posts I want to draw attention to this week is that I studied at Knox Theological Hall for my first degree. The two posts are on fellow Down Under John Sandeman's blog, The Other Cheek. The first is about Thomas Muntzer and Martin Luther. In today's political speak, if Martin Luther was "centre-right" then Thomas Muntzer was "extreme right" or, maybe, "extreme left." The second is about NZ's most famous ever home grown theologian, Lloyd Geering, who died a couple of days ago at the age of 108 (and holding the then title of "NZ's oldest man"). The connecting point - and it is a very loose connecting point - is that Lloyd Geering's first teaching post was at Knox Theological Hall, Dunedin, which was where he became famous for being tried for heresy, and one of my most memorable courses when I was a student at the same Hall (but well after Geering had moved onto his second teaching position, at Victoria University, Wellington) was about Thomas Muntzer. Maybe the stronger connecting point is that both Geering and Muntzer have been viewed by others as heretics!
"Stranger than you thought: Luther, Muntzer and the Peasant Wars" is the title of The Other Cheek's post (actually written by Charles Brammell) about a new consideration(s) of what Muntzer was about when he led the so-called Peasants Rebellion. I will leave you to read the post (because it is a bit complicated and time-consuming to neatly summarise the various new considerations) suffice to say that when we survey what is going on in some streams of global Christianity, we could deduce some parallels in the age old tension between theological and political differences among Christians.
"Once tried for Heresy: NZ's Oldest Man Lloyd Geering Meets Jesus" is the title of the second post. The title picks up on something I have noticed elsewhere on social media, that when a theologian's main thesis is that God is not a being separate to the earthbound experience of life, there may be a bit of a shock when God, met in the risen Jesus, after death, clearly is separate from the horizon of this life. Unless Geering is correct! My reflection here, however, is first on Sandeman's observations about the state of Anglican and Presbyterian denominations here, and then on Paul Morris's observations about Geering's effect on liberal Christianity in these islands.
On the first, we read:
"New Zealand’s scene bears the marks of Geering. The traditional protestant churches- Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican are dominated by progressives or liberals, with evangelicals in a (small?) minority.
There are large Pentecostal churches, but there is a tendency for these to be aligned with right-wing politics, with Destiny Church, for example. Nelson Diocese in the Anglicans in the Province of Aotearoa New Zealand remains a Kiwi echo of the Diocese of Sydney. The Open Brethren, organised as the Christian Community Churches of NZ, have 170 to 202 assemblies. Baptist Churches of New Zealand (Te Hāhi Iriiri o Aotearoa) draw some 25,000 people each Sunday to their 250 evangelical churches. Conservative Presbyterians joined various breakaway churches into the Grace Presbyterian Church in NZ, which is similar to the Presbyterian Church of Australia, in 2002. The GPs have 27 local churches."
I think Presbyterians and Anglicans here would be bemused by the thought that we are "dominated by progressives or liberals". That is not to say that we are, conversely, dominated by "conservatives" such as conservative evangelicals. It is just to say that (1) we are a mixed bag (if looking at us through lens of "progressive/liberal/conservative") and (2) the style of liberalism/progressivism associated with the Lloyd Geerings of old is out of favour within the life of NZ churches.
The latter, incidentally, is a point within Paul Morris's observations, as cited by John Sandeman. Whether that going out of favour in NZ is as much of a responsibility of Geering himself as those observations adduce is, I think, a moot point. Liberal theology - arguably reached a highpoint in the Western world in the 1960s and 1970s - as it led ways of thinking about being Christian which diminished the importance of miracles for establishing the divinity of Jesus (cf. Geering's own published work on the resurrection). But (as Morris notes) heading along that pathway also raised the question, Why bother with church? If Christianity is essentially ethical rather than encounter with the divine (with corporate worship as a response), there is no need to go to church. Fast forward 50 or so years and we see the effects: people in church, any church, are predominantly not liberal/progressive.
I met Lloyd Geering once. He was one of the nicest people I have ever met in my life. I would not care to have met with Thomas Muntzer. He seems like one of the scariest people you could ever meet!
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