No More Extra Gospels
The Joy of the Church’s One Proclamation
About the author: Rev. Micah Cronin (M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary) is an Episcopal priest of the Diocese of New Jersey. He is the Associate Rector at St. George's By the River in Rumson, New Jersey.
The Christianity I grew up in was somewhat preoccupied with apocalypticism, or “the end times.” From early childhood, my exposure to apocalyptic narratives shaped my understanding of faith, fear, and the extra stories that Christians sometimes add to the Gospel.
When I was in elementary school, I was friends with a boy named Patrick. Patrick and his sister lived in a house with their father on the edge of town. They attended a fundamental Baptist church that sat atop a big hill. One summer day, Patrick invited me to join him that night to see a movie his church was showing. I went along, expecting some sort of Christian movie but was certainly surprised by what I saw: a post-rapture apocalyptic movie featuring a realistic, present-day depiction of the Antichrist and his new world order. For some reason, the Antichrist’s regime was persecuting those Christians who had converted after the rapture by arresting them, forcing them into VR headsets which placed them in an interrogation room, and then executing them when they would not renounce Jesus.
I left the movie feeling dazed and disturbed. American Evangelical Christianity is, admittedly, quite weird.1 By that point in my life I had already been taught that there was a government conspiracy to convince us all that the world was billions of years old instead of six thousand years old like the Bible purportedly said; that the Cambrian explosion in the fossil record was evidence that the flood of Noah was not mere myth; and that wearing matching purity rings with your father was not creepy. But summary execution via VR headsets was a bridge too far, even for me.
The dazed and disturbed feeling with which I left my friend’s church developed into a conviction that I held about the Christianity of my youth years before encountering Karl Barth. That conviction was that American Evangelical Christianity was prone to adding extra gospels onto the Gospel. It is not enough for many Evangelicals to proclaim that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, is alive so that we might be saved from sin and death. No, it must be that and a crazed theory of the creation of the universe (complete with notions of a complex scientific and government conspiracy), and a contrived idea of the end of all things, including the rapture and a period of persecution that would rival the horrors of the Colosseum, and a bizarrely strict and untenable hermeneutic for the reading and study of Scripture, and a certain hyper partisan politics. In the Christianity of my upbringing, pulling the threads of these or any number of other extra gospels would cause Jesus himself to unravel. There are conflicting basic concerns at play: one the one hand, the sinful lure of power and superiority that certainty can bring; on the other, a sincere desire for respect and faithfulness to God’s self-revelation in Scripture.
It should be noted that American Evangelicals are not the only Christians who stray from the Church’s one proclamation. Mainline Protestants and Episcopalians/Anglicans commit this sin—though our additions to the Gospel are often by means of subtraction. For example, the Anglican Church of Canada’s recently elected Primate (chief bishop) the Right Reverend Shane Parker, gave a rather depressing interview to Canadian Affairs, wherein he discussed the waning cultural dominance and influence of Canadian Anglicanism. It is the same story everywhere, really, and I am not going to regurgitate it here. The depressing part, to me, was Parker’s proposed response to it. In the interview with Canadian Affairs, Parker stated: “‘I want to see us gain a humble confidence that we have something to share with society.” The article goes on to explain this as “sharing the church’s core Gospel values of peace, justice, care for the vulnerable and creation.”
As concerned as I am about some American Evangelicals’ continued allegiance with the reality-denying, bigoted, conspiracy riddled MAGA cult, I am perhaps more agonized by a bishop whose understanding of Christianity’s offering to society bears no difference from any number of secular goodwill organizations. I have no qualms with anyone who wants to organize and activate others to make society more just, peaceful, clean, and beautiful—and I often participate in such causes as a private citizen. But these causes are not the Gospel. They are not the primary work of the Church. In fact, when the Church attempts to take up these causes as primary issues instead of derivative ones, they become cumbersome burdens that distract and fray the faithful. Christian faith is the result of experiencing Jesus—and that experience happens on God’s terms, not ours. As a result of this experience, a Christian becomes aware of what Jesus has made possible for them: a life that extends beyond, and is being freed from, sin and death—and this life starts here and now. In light of this, the primary task is to proclaim what Jesus has made possible. Through our proclamation Jesus uses us to light new sparks of life over and over. It is true that we can proclaim through our work, specifically when we are following Jesus’ clear directives to care for the sick, the hungry, and those who are alone and vulnerable. But this work on its own is not the point. It is Jesus, who presents himself to us unavoidably, who is the point. Attempts to get around this quickly leads to futility and irrelevance. All of this to say: Bishop Parker’s concern for fundamental human virtues is noble. But his avoidance of God is heartbreaking.
Karl Barth’s consistent witness—birthed in a moment not unlike our own, in the tension of fascism and tepid Christianity—was that Christians have one task: the proclamation of the Gospel. And the Gospel is not a philosophy or principle abstract from our flesh-and-blood lives here and now. The Gospel brings us to Jesus of Nazareth, God in-the-flesh, who by his crucifixion and resurrection defeated sin and death for the sake of the world. We have nothing more, and certainly nothing less, than this to offer.
And this culminates to the point I really want to make: there is no greater joy than sticking to this one proclamation. I love to declare with authority as a Christian and a priest to fellow trans people that Jesus is for them, exactly as they are, and that everything beyond that is someone else’s agenda. I love that the hope I have in Jesus is not dependent on humanity being able to pull itself together enough to execute real and lasting justice—one, because we have proven ourselves to be inept at that project, and two, because Jesus has already been to hell and defeated it for all time. Those forces of evil coming after trans people, coming after migrants, coming after poor people and Black people and Native people and Gazans and whoever else is next on the chopping block—these forces are already dying, and because of Jesus I can laugh at them. I can have joy and freedom even here and now, in my one task of proclaiming and living the truth, hope, and life that Jesus has rendered for me—and for you.
It is important to note that American Evangelical Christianity is not one unified perspective or experience. For the sake of simplicity throughout this post, I use “American Evangelical Christianity” to refer mainly to churches that are white, theologically and socially conservative, biblically literalist, lean Republican, rural/suburban, and patriarchal. However, there are many other expressions of evangelicalism in America. Not all American Evangelicals are white conservatives with a thin alibi as to their whereabouts on January 6th, 2021. Plenty of American Evangelicals are Christians who are passionate about helping people meet and follow Jesus and are socially and theologically progressive, LGBTQ+ affirming, committed to racial and gender justice, do not only center white theology and experience, and reject the merger of Christian practice with partisan politics.
Great piece Micah! I’m glad you echo a lot of the sentiments I and many other postulants here at VTS contemplate as we ready ourselves for ministry in the Church.
“3. The Task of the Community.” CD IV 3 part 2, pp. 795-830, ET. “He, Jesus Christ, is in nuce (in a nutshell) but in totality and fulness the content of its task.” (797) Barth notes Acts 1:8: “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”. (797) “Declaring Himself, He pronounces a single and unambiguous Yes. “ (797) Keep reading!