A FIRST TIME VISIT
TO AN OLD-TIME PLACE

C. Jack Orr

"And Can It Be" is not only a hymn. It is the question friends ask as they observe my recent religious behavior. I, too, am astonished. Having once escaped from fundamentalism and all its cousins, I can now be caught reading evangelical theology, visiting evangelical churches, and singing evangelical hymns. The words of T. S. Eliot in the Four Quartets give the best explanation I can offer of this emerging intrigue:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

An Old-Time Place

Fundamentalism was my starting place. I was the son of a fundamentalist minister with all the rights, privileges, and aggravations that go therewith. Among the privileges were belonging to a spirited community, sharing a mission, learning speaking skills from charismatic evangelists, meeting my wife, and singing gospel songs. As for aggravations, sitting on a hard pew six times a week and a record seven on Easter is an apt metaphor for the restraints that limited my teenage élan.

A more serious restriction was placed on grace. Of course, salvation was free by grace and not of works, but there was one exception. At least to my adolescent ears, one monumental cognitive work was required: hair-splitting, doctrinal certainty. Fornication was forgivable but doubt meant damnation. Many of my friends chose the more forgivable offense. I could control my behavior to draconian extremes but could not control my mind. I was born to doubt.

Doubt detection flourished in the fundamentalism of my youth. Right beliefs were detected through right words. People who did not "speak the language" were probably "not saved." At any moment a nuance of linguistic deviance could call into question the salvation of Mennonites, of Pentecostals, or of other "Arminians." Not surprisingly, hometown suspicions were aroused when I entered Messiah College.

At Messiah, I discovered the power of vital ideas. Some vital ideas were also troubling ideas. Beyond the intentions of a caring faculty, I developed questions about God, the Bible, and the boundaries of the Christian community.

When I took these questions home, they were received as threats and insults, arrows flung against the fabric of friendship, family, and faith. Agreement was the ultimate test of love. Not wanting to hurt loved ones, I silenced my voice but not my thoughts. The choice was clear. I could have my faith or my mind, but not both. I chose my mind.

Ceaseless Exploration

The secular university seemed the logical place to find an unfettered intellectual haven. I became a university professor. Academe would be my church. My mission: To help students think about their thinking so as to improve their lives. With no social pressure to be a theist, all criticism of Christianity was welcomed. On the other hand, critiques of that criticism were also invited. Critical rationalism became my daily meditation. Then, while marching to intellectual Zion, I encountered two surprises—one an epiphany, the other a pestilence.

On the side of epiphany, mysticism emerged as the best refuge from dogmatism. In Scott Peck’s words, "If you meet someone who thinks she has all the answers, who has God all sewn up in her back pocket, then you have not met a mystic" (Golf and the Spirit, New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999, p. 126) Mysticism, not atheism, guided my quest for freedom. "The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao." "The finger that points to the moon is not the moon." "A name is a prison, God is free" (from Nikos Kazantzakis, as quoted by Loren Eiseley in The Invisible Pyramid, New York: Scribner’s, 1970, p. 31), and similar sentiments created within my explorations a space for grace.

Then there was pestilence. My first university teaching position revealed that fundamentalism does not have a monopoly on restricted thinking. If you believe it does, spend an afternoon with a logical positivist. Circular reasoning and arbitrary judgments pervade secular thought. In some quarters of academe, there is an unspoken code: "Thou shall not discuss anything that really matters."

For example, Ray was an outstanding analytic philosopher. He was visiting with me in a church setting. He wanted to talk about immortality. "I do not know how we could be immortal," he said, "but I wish we were. It would take a miracle to bring consciousness back to matter; but then I can’t account for how matter at birth takes on consciousness. What do you think?"

"Ray," I replied, "I feel intimidated talking with you. I know what analytic philosophers can do with mushy speech. Take your question back to the Philosophy Department. Surely your colleagues discuss immortality."

"No, no, we don’t, not personally," said Ray. "Never have we talked about life, death, or what is truly vital to us."

Ray’s experience was repeatedly my own in academe. Yet reason without soul and service was never my agenda for becoming a professor. Enduring a meeting with cynical academics is worse than sitting on a hard pew in a fundamentalist chapel. At least in the chapel, someone might show signs of life and say, "Amen." In fact, my concept of what a university education should be was not shaped in a secular university. Where did I get the idea learning should be focused—not only on knowledge—but, imagination, wisdom, application, service, and students’ lives? The answer became clear on a recent visit to the Messiah College web page: "Our mission is to educate men and women toward maturity of intellect, character and Christian faith in preparation for lives of service, leadership and reconciliation in church and society."

When seeking refuge in the university, I expected to find Messiah’s mission except for the words Christian faith and church. I now wonder: Is it possible to develop this vision of higher learning apart from commitment to a particularistic faith? Is it a coincidence that, in the past 20 years, the person most responsible for broadening higher education’s view of scholarship and service—Ernest Boyer—was educated at an evangelical Messiah college?

The exploration that had led me away from my spiritual heritage began to nudge me back to its starting place. For example: I was absolutely certain I could not talk to my father because he was an absolutely certain fundamentalist. At midlife I took a chance. I asked him how he saw my role when I was a child in his church. I began to understand my father for the first time. I described to him my spiritual journey. I asked him to listen.

He did. It was a gift. We found a bond beyond agreement. One real conversation with the right person—often a parent—can open the door to a myriad of reconciling possibilities.

Nevertheless, even after that pivotal conversation, I did not attend church for 10 years. A decade of absence met its end on September 11, 2001.

A First-Time Visit

The horror that gripped the world on September 11 awakened me from my nondogmatic slumbers. It seemed that Moses stood before the entrance to the twenty-first century with the ancient invitation: "I put before you this day, life and death, blessings and cursing; therefore, choose life that you might live."

A tide of death choices was sweeping the globe. From what I saw in the academic world, postmodern thinking did not have the strength to deal spiritually with premodern fanaticism. For the first time, my sense of connection with the "God beyond God," as Paul Tillich put it in The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952, p. 188), began to fail. I needed to hear an unequivocal affirmation of Life.

While reading Karl Barth, Peter Berger, and John Updike for gritty declarations of faith, I discovered Philip Yancey. His youthful response to fundamentalism was as severe as my own. Yancey rejected the church because he "found so little grace there." He returned because he found grace "nowhere else" (What’s So Amazing about Grace, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1997, p. 16). His discussions of Chesterton and Dillard created for me an unthinkable possibility. I would visit an evangelical congregation.

On the outside, the church looked like churches back home. As I drove into the parking lot, I felt old fears. Surely there will be an invitation for "the lost," I pondered. Some brother will put his arm on my shoulder and ask, "Are you saved?" At a minimum, visitors will be directed to stand and "Tell how the Lord led you here today?"

None of these fears materialized. The service was well designed. Each part supported a unifying theme. It was aesthetically refreshing. What kind of church is this? I wondered. My ecclesiastical detection map was failing. This church was conservative, probably evangelical, but free of pressure. It was cosmopolitan. All ages were present. Young people seemed eager to be there. The minister (Bowen Matthews, of Wilmington, Delaware) was kind and thoughtful. He suggested that a generalized religious consciousness was not sufficient to support us in the post-September 11 world. We would need to embrace "the sting of particularity." He was addressing my issues and he made sense.

Comfortable now, I was tempted to shift into a rational analysis. My academic friends would seize the moment to do a cool "ethnography" of the place. A terrible thought. Exactly the kind of detachment I despised.

On the other hand, how could I cope with the anthropomorphic language I was hearing? Shouldn’t disclaimers be made about symbolism and images of a three-storied universe?

At that moment, four hundred people began singing praise songs. One song was from my youth. I had sung it many times, years ago on gospel teams:

He is the mighty King, Master of everything;
His name is Wonderful, Jesus my Lord.

I joined with the singing and tears came to my eyes. All vain fears of anthropomorphism vanished. I recovered something that as Kris Kristofferson sings, I had "lost somehow, somewhere along the way." ("Sunday Morning Coming Down"). This was my heritage. This belonged to me. It was holy ground.

Since that Sunday morning, I have made numerous first-time visits to old-time places. I am discovering that evangelical writings and worship are emerging as vital centers for faith and reason. In fundamentalism, I saw no place for my mind. In secular domains of academe, I almost lost my soul.

How strange that mind and spirit should now embrace in places where they were initially divided. It is as strange and unexpected as grace.

—Dr. C. Jack Orr, Wilmington, Delaware, is Professor of Communication Studies at West Chester University.