New.Demonstration

Marsha G. Witten, All is Forgiven – HT: Michael Horton

Growing churches proclaim an attractive message warmly massaging hearers’ hearts. That’s what Marsha G. Witten found in her study, All Is Forgiven: The Secular Message in American Protestantism. Interested (as a sociologist, not as a believer) in what was being preached in modern churches, Witten sent questionnaires to pastors in Presbyterian (USA) and Southern Baptist churches, asking for copies of sermons preached on the parable of the prodigal son. She analyzed 47 sermons and found them portraying a thoroughly secularized version of Christianity which bears little resemblance to the more demanding Gospel heard by our ancestors. With a few exceptions, the sermons Witten studied reveal accommodations to our secular society. God no longer appears as a high and holy “wholly other” Being; rather he tends to be portrayed as Daddy, Sufferer, Lover.” In four-fifths of the sermons, “God is portrayed exclusively or predominantly in terms or the positive functions he serves for men and women. Chief among these functions is one that can be labeled ‘therapeutic’” (p. 35). God is described, rather routinely it seems, as a “Significant Other, who provides comfort, counsel, and understanding for the individual’s psychological concerns” (pp. 130-131).

Thus God is routinely called a “Daddy” who suffers deep emotional distress when we err. Though only once in the New Testament did Jesus use the word “Abba” (and that not in the parable of the prodigal son!), the preachers routinely referred to Him thusly. He loves us unconditionally, just as we are, and is saddened (but not angry) at our sinful behavior. He loves us “regardless of merit and in the same way—freely and equally” (p. 44). Now and then the sermons remind folks that God is also a “judge” who will punish unrepentant sinners. But, by- and-large, “The transcendent, majestic, awesome God of Luther and Calvin—whose image informed early Protestant visions of the relationship between human beings and the divine—has undergone a softening of demeanor throughout the American experience of Protestantism, with only minor interruptions” (p. 53). God, mainly concerned with our everyday and internal worlds, “in his immanence and understanding, smiles benevolently on the age of psychology” (p. 132).

If God is seen as a non-judgmental, unconditional lover, the world is usually understood as an arena
wherein believers find the best route to the good life. The prodigal son certainly went astray, getting lost, which was no treat, but in returning home he found the place which is rightly his, right where his Daddy wanted him, enjoying a party and celebrating his privileged status. Indeed, Witten concludes, “the world of choices” for modern Protestants, “poses no difficulty for Christian life, largely because the demands of spirituality are so bounded, so domesticated to concerns of daily middle-class existence, that they do not require abandoning secular pursuits” (p. 77).

When compared with earlier Protestant preachers, such as Jonathan Edwards, modern preachers fear to stress the reality and damning dimensions of sin. Some preachers, generally Southern Baptists, did dwell on the willfulness, the self-serving sinfulness of the prodigal’s rebellion. But in many sermons, the prodigal was portrayed as the vintage “victim”—more to be pitied than blamed—so lauded by modern Americans! Witten particularly analyzes the “rhetorical strategies” devised by preachers to take the sting out of “sin.” Some of these include: “the device of depersonalization, which renders notions of sinfulness vague and abstract; the device of selectivity, exemplified in the omission of the foundational doctrine of original sin; the device of deflection, through which sin is projected off listeners and onto groups of outsiders; the device of mitigation, employed to modify the potential for audience identification with sinful characters; and the device of therapeutic tolerance, through which sin is translated as errant behavior, explanations for misdeeds are sought in social context rather than in the individual, and the response of judgment is replaced by that of empathy” (p. 101).

Rather than stressing the depravity of human nature, most sermons celebrated the possibilities of personal transformation. Earlier developments in American church history paved the way for applauding “self-love” and encouraging “self-realization.” Taking their key from psychologists like Carl Rogers, whose humanistic message struck responsive chords in vast numbers of people, Protestant preachers gradually began turning the Gospel of Jesus into the Gospel of Self-Acceptance. In every person, the sermons suggest, there is an innately good self, created in God’s image, which needs deliverance from legalism and judgmental authority figures in order to find the freedom and joy designed for him. Certainly we need God to help us find our real selves, but He’s more a facilitator than redeemer! “Conversion,” Witten concludes, “is portrayed far less as the need to grapple with sin-nature than as a reorientation of one’s psychology toward the creation of a close interpersonal relationship with God” (p.
127).

Anyone looking for evidence that a “therapeutic gospel” has entered the sermonic mainstream will find this book full of documentation. So long as one understands the limitations of Witten’s methodology, this is a helpful study. And, to the degree that it illustrates what other studies, employing other methodologies and utilizing other data, suggest, it is most persuasive.