Biographical Note

Readers have noted that from time to time I indulge in judgments that sound rather, well, Olympian, coming from a librarian in Kenosha, Wisconsin—not unlike the Chronicler who, after recounting the events of a Hebrew king’s reign, blandly declares that he, in sheep or goat fashion, did good or evil in the sight of the Lord, and there’s an end on it. This is a procedure particularly obnoxious to our own massively self-excusing--er, I mean, non-judgmental--generation, as anxious, perhaps, to absolve Ahab and Manasseh as it is Judas and the Wicked Witch of the West.

As a service to those who, having seen where Hutchens gets off, wonder where he got on, I offer a brief apologia.  For the advantage of those who could care less, it has been placed on the post continuation that follows.

It begins with my upbringing in fundamentalist/Evangelical circles. There I was encouraged to read and believe the Bible as the Word of God, which I did. But thinking for myself with the Bible as my authority, as my father strongly encouraged me by example to do, presented me as a boy with two very great problems, which later I came to recognize, as they congealed somewhat, as the problem of authority and the problem of the Church. I have written a fair amount on the former and shall not rehearse it here except to say that it was the real subject of my dissertation, and led to the conclusion that the Catholics and Protestants have basically the same idea on the subject and are wrong, and the Orthodox, for all their catastrophic sins and faults, seem to be basically right. No, I’m not going to discuss it with anyone who hasn’t read, with care and understanding, what I’ve written already—I haven’t been given the time.

In my youth the problem of the Church presented itself to me in the form of the question, “Why do we hardly consider it possible for members of other churches to be Christians?” Our denominational theology, despite the pastors’ attempts to trace it to the New Testament, seemed to be relatively new on the scene. Why were there places in the Bible where in his sermons, and in the Sunday school classes, we had to “get fancy,” that is, all of a sudden switch into a mode where we didn’t treat the Bible as true unless we first added to or subtracted from it? Why, when preaching in this mode, did the pastor inform us in an oblique way that we were not qualified to question his authorities because we did not know Greek or Hebrew? Something was fishy here. Might others be different than us because they didn't get tricky with certain parts of the Bible? Are Catholics—or Presbyterians, for that matter—as stupid, or as abandoned by God, as our church’s beliefs would lead us to think? It would be silly to imagine that Catholic experts don’t know Greek and Hebrew. I knew a good many people (I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood) who were not in our communion who seem to believe the same basic things we do, and were just as devout as any of us. What was going on  here?

So, I resolved to find out as much about these things as I could by firsthand experience, and have in my adult life always worked toward that end. My first real extra-denominational experience was serving for several years as a sexton in a large, very wealthy Presbyterian church. My formal education includes state university bachelor's and library degrees, attendance at nine seminaries or graduate schools of theology, liberal and conservative, Protestant, Catholic, and secular (this last is how I would categorize the Divinity School at the University of Chicago). I hold two degrees from an Evangelical seminary, and two, including a Ph.D. in theology, from a liberal Protestant school. For almost four years I served as the pastor of a mainline (Congregationalist) Protestant church, in which I was ordained, and thereafter became an Episcopalian until that denomination fell. I have preached or taught in Lutheran, Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Independent Evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox churches, can speak the dialects of them all, but have had no problems in any of these situations, except with the liberals, when I simply rest upon the scriptures as universally understood in the churches.

To me the Vincentian Canon ("what has been believed everywhere, in all places, by all Christians") is no theoretical construct, rendered delicate because of major disagreements among Christians, but has real, almost palpable meaning. Ninety-nine percent of the preaching of a preacher who gives careful and respectful treatment to the scriptures (which is to say, doing none of the adding or subtracting that defines the sect) is non-controversial among believers.  Nor does one need to prove to me J. Gresham Machen’s theses that (1) there is a discrete spiritual phenomenon and doctrinal identity that is denominated “liberalism,” and (2) it is not Christianity, but another religion altogether, fully describable as such according to its doctrines--fundamentally mendacious, fundamentally deceptive, fundamentally demonic, hostile to the Christian faith. I have watched it up close for years, know what it believes and denies, understand its particular appeal to intellectual pride (not intellect--but pride), have seen what it does to the churches that decide to accommodate it, and watched them one by one wither and die as Christian churches.  It is exactly as H. Richard Niebuhr said: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."

It has numerous ways of disguising itself, but all of them attack the faith at its Christological root. In our generation it principally appears as egalitarianism, making its play by using the Christian doctrine of the equality of the sexes to attack the Christian doctrine of masculine priority—which of course casts a shadow over both Christology and Trinitarian theology. I hate it passionately. There is such a thing as real Christianity; it is accurately summarized in the Creed, which begins with “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.”  And believing "in God" means not just crediting him with existence, as do the trembling devils, but the existential condition of being in Christ by baptism, which is to say, by saving faith.

I deny this to be an account of a remarkably rootless and confused stumbling about. It is the story of a person who was basically well-taught in childhood, and while growing somewhat in his understanding of the faith, believes the same things now that he did when he was small. The illusion of movement is created by the fact that in my lifetime the western churches, Catholic and Protestant, have undergone upheaval as violent and concentrated as they have any time since the Reformation.   (The blue-collar Conservative Baptist Church in which I was raised with a serious, traditional Protestant order of service, now has a gaudy, foot-stompin’ religious floor show with Jeezus as its special, invisible guest star. The pastor, once master of an orderly house which spoke softly of the catholic faith, is now led about by an impertinent jester with the title “worship leader.”  Analogous things have happened in most churches.  There have been, in the wake of feminism, substantive, doctrinal changes that are deviations from--or, if one takes the standard line, improvements upon--traditional beliefs and practices of the whole Church.  This time the Catholics haven't needed Protestants to break their altars; they are doing the job quite well by themselves by allowing Catholic vandals do the work unhindered.)

Those who remain steady against this backdrop appear to be moving. What would have, seventy-five years ago, required for someone like me not much more than a once-in-a-lifetime change from conservative Baptist to conservative Presbyterian (which much of my paternal family is anyway, and which shares much of the mindset of Orthodoxy), has become more like an exercise in duck and cover, leaping from one shell crater to another.  I'm presently back in an Evangelical Protestant one--under a pastor who is a blessed atavism--a "bad Evangelical" by current standards, thank God.

And to anticipate comments I know I will receive: The calls of certain of my brethren to join them in other shell craters they have mistaken for Mount Zion does not tempt me; it only makes me wonder what they are drinking, and how long it will be before the casing upon which they have spread their crystal and fine old china finds its own live fuse. Those of you who have "come home" are in as great a danger of being de-Christianized by your own communion's follies as I am by mine.