I am working my way back through David Wells' excellent book, No Place for Truth, Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology .
This weekend, Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral fame passed the leadership torch on to his son , and Dr. Wells had some very interesting things to say about Schuller in this book, published back in 1993.
Below are a few quotes I found very interesting.
"Western culture once valued the higher achievements of human nature - reasoned discourse, the good use of language, fair and impartial law, the importance of our collective memory, tradition, the core of moral axioms to which collective consent was given, those aesthetic achievements in the arts that represented the high-water marks of the human spirit. These are now all in retreat. Reasoned discourse has largely disappeared; in a nation of plummeting literacy, language has been reduced to the lowest common denominator, to the vulgar catch phrases of the youth culture; the core of values has disintegrated; the arts are degraded; the law is politicized; politics is trivialized. In place of high culture, we have what is low. Unruly instinctual drives replace thought; the darker side of human nature destroys the nobler, leaving a trail of pornography, violence and indifference. Perhaps this is the triumph of the id over the superego, as the Freudians say; certainly it is the passing of the old order and the ascendancy of a new order that celebrates the collapse of the barriers that once held back the darker reaches of the human spirit. In a strangely perverse fashion, many now maintain that it is precisely in giving expression to those darker reaches that we will find release from our guilt, anxiety, and alienation." p.169
"The American way of life may be the envy of the world, its gadgets and accoutrements sought after and emulated, but the American version of happiness, it turns out, is quite lethal. America is a violent and disturbed country. Its teenagers have the highest suicide rate in the world (in 1991, more teenage boys died from gunshot wounds than from all natural causes combined); it leads the world in the consumption of drugs, legal and illegal, in addictions of various kinds, in divorce, in the incidence of depressive illness, and in the marketing of a vast range of therapies to counteract these problems - all of which points to a vast underlying unhappiness. It is this that continues to feed and substantiate a need for the continuing psychologizing of life. The psychologists who embody and service this need are frequently the exegetes of American anti-religion -- but they are also the last and only hope for happiness in America." pp. 170-171
"In another age, Robert Schuller's ministry, for example, might well have been viewed not as Christian ministry at all, but as comedy. Would it not be possible to view him as providing a biting parody of American self-absorption? Sin, he says with a cherubic smile, is not what shatters our relationship to God; the true culprit is the jaundiced eye that we have turned on ourselves. The problem is that we do not esteem ourselves enough. In the Crystal Cathedral, therefore, let the word sin be banished, whether in song, Scripture, or prayer. There is never any confession there. Then again, Christ was not drawing a profound moral compass in the Sermon on the Mount; he was just giving us a set of "be (happy) attitudes." The word was, don't worry, be happy. And God is not so mean as to judge; he is actually very amiable and benign. Comedy this devastating would be too risky for most to attempt. But Schuller is no comic. He earnestly wants us to believe all of this, and many do. When he makes these pronouncements, he attracts a large and devoted Christian following. What is the appeal?
"The answer, it would seem, is that Schuller is adroitly, if unconsciously, riding the stream of modernity. By Yankelovich's estimate, 80 percent of the nation is now engaged in the search for new rules premised on the search for and discovery of the self. Schuller is offering in easily digestible bites the therapeutic model of life through which the healing of the bruised self is found. He is by no means alone in this; he is simply the most shameless." p. 175
"So in the name of Christ I call you: Come, take him as your Savior and your Lord and the Treasure of your life. He never casts out any who comes in faith. He forgives sin. He clothes with righteousness. He gives the Holy Spirit. He will keep you. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." (John 10:27) Hear the voice of the good Shepherd and come."