ESSENTIAL METHODIST TEACHINGS
THE CROSS (Part II)
By Dr. Riley Case
Whatever happened to the cross? Or, more to the point, whatever happened to one of the most essential teachings, not only of Methodism but of all of Christian faith, that Christ “truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt but also the actual sins of men” (Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church Article II (1784). Or, in the words of Wesley: “Indeed nothing in the Christian system is of greater consequence than the doctrine of the Atonement. It is properly the distinguishing point between Deism and Christianity“(Letters, VI, pp. 297-298).
The Atonement, it seems, is missing in action in United Methodist writing and preaching, at least among some who identify as progressive or liberal. I searched out all of the websites (at least all that I knew about) of United Methodists and others who identify as progressive and found not a single mention of the cross, let alone the Atonement. I searched out the web pages of all of the major boards and agencies of the church and the seminaries. There is hardly any mention of the centrality of the cross (nor of sin for that matter)
I found one exception in a progressive organization outside United Methodism. There is a reference to atonement on the National Council of Churches webpage advertising the Reparatory Justice Series: Atoning for Injustice & Building a Future Together. Atonement in the announcement is not an act of God but is associated with reparations and social justice efforts. Christians—at least traditionalist Christians who take sin seriously—might point out that our moral failures are so great that we could never, that is never ever, by human effort hope to make right our sins by whatever form of reparations human beings might devise. If gospel means good news, there is hardly good news in the assertion that we ourselves must make up for the offenses for which we are guilty. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ bears the offense in order to reconcile us to God and to each other. This is what makes Christianity different from all other religions. Reparations might be linked with ideas of justice but the idea that we must make it right ourselves is not Good News but horrible, depressing, condemning bad news.
And yet somehow this is what is being proposed these days by some progressives. Rita Nakashima Brock in a major article, “An Epidemic of Moral Injury,” in Christian Century’s well-known and well-regarded series “How My Mind Has Changed” (9-8-21), openly and straightforwardly places the blame for historic injustices, sufferings, shame, mistrust and despair on “atonement theology.”
“Injustices have come through a cruel Christian history which was enacted on our blood-soaked soil,” claims Brock. That is linked through our whole western civilization, which has “long been full of violence and injustice.” White nationalist Christianity is a “fractious, militant, anti-democratic faith that embraces war as a sign of end times and a means of salvation. Its foundation is atonement theology” (my underlining).
Brock goes on: the mission of the church is to support people in resisting evil, healing the sick, transforming sin into moral accountability, feeding the hungry, and blessing the earth as a great gift of God. Nothing wrong with any of those goals but one could advance these goals without the Bible or prayer or divine intervention or Jesus or the cross or grace or mercy. We are reduced to a religion of doing good as defined by elitist philosophers. The article references “atonement theology” ten different times, all in a negative context. According to Brock atonement theology is cruel; it is based on an angry God; it is violent; it is patriarchal; it leads to racism and sexism.
Let us be straightforward. This is not just an attack on a perspective within Christianity. This is an attack on Christianity itself. And yet Christian Century considers Rita Nakashima Brock as one of the leading “Christian” thinkers in America.
Here is another comment, perhaps not as extreme, but still most telling from a progressive web page:
However, in the twenty-first century, the idea of substitutionary atonement has become questionable, at best, and grotesque at worst. Surely a loving God did not require the shed blood of a human sacrifice as a prerequisite for our salvation. If we also deny the idea of original sin, then there was no reason for substitutionary atonement.
In 1929 George Herbert Betts at Northwestern University did some surveys which he reported in a book by Abingdon Press: The Beliefs of 700 Ministers. One of the questions the ministers were asked to respond to was: Do you believe “That Jesus’ death on the cross was the one act which made possible the remission of man’s sins? Only 70% of all the ministers responded positively. 99% of the Lutherans responded yes; 78% of the Evangelicals (Evangelicals who later became EUB and then UM); 60% of the Methodists said yes, and only 20% of the Congregationalists. The survey was taken at the height of modernism and concentrated heavily on urban pastors.
I believe that a similar survey taken today would reveal United Methodists are much more affirming of the importance of the cross for salvation. Soon after the Betts book, the M.E. and M.E. South. and M.P churches combined for a new hymnal (1935) promoted as “New Words for a New Day.” It was an intentional effort to reflect the theological modernism that was now dominating the seminaries and the leadership of the church. Wesley hymns were reduced from 558 in the 1848 hymnal to 56 in the 1935 hymnal. Sections of “Need for Salvation,” “Warnings and invitations,” ”Ascension and Reign,” “Judgment,” ”Retribution” and “Heaven” were eliminated (“Original Sin” and “Hell” had been removed in 1905). New sections included “Kingdom of God,” “Service” and “Brotherhood.” As part of the de-emphasizing of redemption, “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (a redemption song) was replaced as hymn #1. “Redeemed by the blood” and learning the Apostles’ Creed were removed from the baptismal service. Two new creeds, “A modern Affirmation” and the “Korean Creed,” were introduced positing Christianity without the cross. Of all of the new hymns introduced in 1935, not one had a reference to the blood of Jesus or an atoning cross.
I grew up with the 1935 hymnal. I was not a critic in those days. I loved the hymns. There was still a lot of gospel in the hymnal left over from previous hymnals. However, I was aware there were a lot of the hymns our church never sang. Obviously, neither did others. 109 of the new hymns never made it into the next hymnal. What the seminary professors and professional musicians liked were not necessarily what common, ordinary Methodists liked.
I was privileged to be a consultant on the 1988 Hymnal Revision Committee. The Publishing House, more interested in selling hymnals than wanting to reflect the newest theological fads, was responsible for the hymnal and conducted surveys to find out what was really meaningful to people. The result?--a hymnal truly inclusive, taking into account all of the constituencies of the church. This, for once, included evangelicals. When all these were polled instead of taking out the cross and the blood of Jesus, we actually added a number of such hymns. The result?--our present UM hymnal contains 43 hymns that specifically speak of Jesus’ blood and another 51 hymns that while not mentioning specifically the “blood of Jesus” are specific in references to redemption through the cross. Salvation songs new to the 1989 hymnal include such as “Victory in Jesus,” “Nothing but the Blood,” “Because He Lives,” ”Grace Greater Than All Our Sin,” “In the Garden,” “It Is Well With My Soul,” and “I Stand Amazed In the Presence.”
Many of our churches these days are using praise and worship music instead of hymns in our services. Still, when persons old and young are asked to identify favorite hymns they most often speak of gospel hymns that have been so much a part of our United Methodist heritage. In recent months when COVID and some ill health have kept my wife Ruth and me frequently at home, we have made it a habit to go from page to page through our United Methodist Hymnal playing and singing the hymns of our faith. Often tears come to my eyes. When I teach Christian doctrine I often tell people that the truths behind the various theories of the Atonement are too deep to explain literally; they speak to us on a different level, a level often expressed best by hymns.
So also at our funerals. In our conference at the funeral of one of our clergy, it is a custom that our ministers gather around the casket and sing. Different songs are sung but the one I believe to be most common has the words:
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! It is well with my soul, It is well, it is well, with my soul.
