One of Robert Webber’s last books came in the big brown truck today. It’s called, Who Gets to Narrate the World, and it was published posthumously.

I was flipping through it tonight just getting ready to do some other work, and I saw something that caught my eye.  So I read a section entitled, “Reform Our Accomodation to the Cultural Milieu”.

I want to share a few words from this section that deal with the impact of civil religion on the Gospel narrative.  Webber states:

In my association with many who affirm the faith - students, pastors, lay-people - I find that, though the words of the Christian narrative are recited, the profound meaning and depth of the narrative have suffered a considerable reduction.  These reductions occurred through a Christianity tainted by civil religion, rationalism, privatism and pragmatism. - pg 125

Webber then spends a couple of pages working through American civil religion.  Then again, he states:

But just because democracy is influenced by the implications of Christian narrative does not make it the Christian narrative.  The Christian narrative is God’s story of the world, and throughout history, God’s people have lived in God’s narrative under the authority of every conceivable political and economic system devised by the world.

So if we are to recover the Christian narrative, we must first disabuse ourselves of civil religion.  We live in two narratives simultaneously.  We live in the narrative of God and within a culture that lives by the narrative of democracy.  The two narratives are separate, yet we live in them both simultaneously.  However, as Christians, our ultimate commitment is to God’s narrative:  “Jesus is Lord.”  There is not other worthy allegience. - pg 128.

In a later post I will deal with the book in total, and specifically about his charge not to lose the narrative to rationalism, privatism, consumerism and pragmatism.

Webber was a master writer.  This is going to be a fun read!

Through Scot McKnight, I found out Robert Webber’s last two books are out. I am a huge Webber fan. The first book is Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting Gods Narrative. From the back cover:

God has a story. Worship does God’s story. There is a crisis of worship today. The problem goes beyond matters of style–it is a crisis of content and of form. Worship in churches today is too often dead and dry, or busy and self-involved. Robert Webber attributes these problems to a loss of vision of God and of God’s narrative in past, present, and future history. As he examines worship practices of Old Testament Israel and the early church, Webber uncovers ancient principles and practices that can reinvigorate our worship today and into the future. The final volume in Webber’s acclaimed Ancient-Future series, Ancient-Future Worship is the culmination of a lifetime of study and reflection on Christian worship. Here is an urgent call to recover a vigorous, God-glorifying, transformative worship through the enactment and proclamation of God’s glorious story. The road to the future, argues Webber, runs through the past.

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