Frederica Mathewes-Green is a Greek Orthodox Christian, author, speaker, and commentator. she contributes regularly to beliefnet, National Review Online, and regularly appears on National Public Radio. like Michael Horton, she resides in Leonard Sweet’s “garden” clearing, unsurprising since she is an Orthodox Christian, and seeks to preserve both the methods and message of the church. her article, for me, was much harder to pin down than the other articles because of the style in which she wrote and because the content, for the most part, wasn’t exacly “on topic.” her article was much more a lesson in Greek Orthodox apologetics than it was a response to the question of the Emergent Church movement, although she does have some things to say about the topic at hand. because of this, this “review” will probably be pretty short as the purpose of these reviews is to respond, not to the theology of the Greek Orthodox Church, but the theology (or lack thereof) of those in the Emergent movement.

Frederica’s article is written in the form of a catechism, a series of preconceived questions and answers. while allowing for succinct statements responding to the questions she asks, this method also takes away from expounding on ideas. she begins her article by describing how, through the centuries, those pursuing nonconformity actually ending up in conformity because their nonconforming ideas become “cool” and are meshed in with whatever the status quo happens to be. she cites Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain as an example of this, as the piece is nothing more than a urinal yet became one of the most iconic images of the Dada movement in art. she defines the drive for nonconformity and the desire to experiment with new methods and message as the hope to bring brutal realism and truth to the “optimistic and orderly view of the world,” the view that these nonconformists see as “artificial and incapable of expressing the confusion and darkness” that those who desired truth sensed.

she compares this sense of searching for what is true with the so-called “Jesus Questers” who have been seeking to revise the “orthodox” (little “o”) view of Jesus since around the middle 1700s (although it culminated in the 19th and 20th centuries). she states that these attempts to revise Jesus are characterized by the “rejection of the prevailing view and proposal of a substitute Jesus filled with whatever virtues were most valued at the time,” or, in other words, they wanted get back to the “true” Jesus that did not have all the fluff on Him that had been added over the last however many centuries. however, these Questers, according to Philip Jenkins, all seem to be ignorant of the Questers that came before them and “believed that they were uniquely bold and felt particular exhileration when their works outraged stuffy, proper people.” In regard to these quests to find the authentic Jesus, Frederica says that they go wrong by mistakenly identifying the sufficient and admirable Son of God with “passing popular ideas of what is admirable or desirable.” she would agree with Albert Schweitzer in saying that the Questers will only find the Jesus that they want to find, a Jesus that, instead of being muddled with 1700 years of Christian thought, is muddled with their own personal wants and desires in someone they wish to follow.

she then moves into a discussion on culture and describes how clever marketing gurus played on the fears of American consumers in creating the “rebel” figure who is a societal “nonconformist” (although not really), giving consumers the hope that if they acted or looked or played, etc. in the way that the rebel in the marketing ads does (and thus conforming to an image!), then they can stay cool and hip and in nonconformal bliss. these people, according to Frederica, are not rebels. how could they be! they conform to the rebel idea and become like everyone else who wants to exemplify “cool.” she cites an example of those who are “true” rebels. she states that those people who stand “outside an abortion clinic on a cold, Saturday morning wearing really uncool sneakers and an uncool cardigan, praying” are true rebels. true rebels are those people who sacrifice their reputation to fight for, and even die for, a cause that they believe to be true, worthwhile, and life-changing.

she maintains a softer position on postmodernism than Andy Crouch and Michael Horton, who both believed that postmodernism does not really exist, by saying that it is impossible to tell whether or not postmodernism exists. this uncertainty is due in large part to the fact that “dissatisfaction with the current times is an old phenomenon.” however, times do change and she acknowledges that they could be changing now, but that future generations will not necessarily call this era of culture “postmodernism,” but will label it by the distinctive features that emerge which are not known to us at this point in time. people aspire to continually wanting to revise the prevailing ideas of culture, and more specifically of Jesus, because they so desire to relieve the pain of the dilemma of living a in times of weariness andn vanity by creating a culture or a Savior into something they can understand and relate to. this is not possible, however, because objective truths exist and are unchangeable, no matter how much we want them to change.

Frederica then discusses how these attempts to change or mold culture and Jesus end up actually doing great harm, rather than changing people’s minds about the present situation. these attempts to keep pace with the culture (even if through nonconformist means which later become conformist) usually “result in desperate faddishness that looks lame a decade later.” she doesn’t deny that some changes are necessary, such as translating the Scriptures into local languages. what is not necessary, though, is trying to make the Christian faith appealing. she invokes the words of Paul in stating that the gospel is not appealing, but is, instead, “inherently not appealing but challenging…[it is] an offense and a stumbling block.” those who “come” to faith in Christ because of clever marketing or by buying into mere celebrity will most likely come to feel deceived and easily fall away when challenges arise. niche worship services and overly “seeker sensitive” practices “focus attention on the superficial rather than on those more difficult elements that pertain to all humans everywhere and to the unchanging God with whom they must deal.” (amen!) cultural adaptations of the Gospel will never go deep enough in the faith, will always remain on a superficial understanding of the nature of God and the great work of Redemption, and will fail to know Christ Himself. the place to begin to know Christ and not fall into a superficial faith is through the Scriptures, a cross-generational collection of stories that, “whether told, written, or painted” contain a dynamic and transformative power.

[it is here that she launches into a discussion on Greek Orthodox theology, so i will skip this part and pick back up near the end of the chapter]

this transformative power of the Gospel is the means in which God chooses to transform souls. not the devices of men, or the conforming of the church to the culture around it. Frederica states, “the best way to help someone come to repentance may not be to indulge them; it may be necessary to intervene and confront.” (amen again!) is only when confronted with the true Gospel that people can be changed. the idea is not to convert the (church) culture, because culture itself can never be converted. the way to change things is to change individuals through the outworking of the Great Commission. “when enough people change,” she says, “the culture follows.”

ok. so the post ended up being a lot longer than i thought it was going to. going back through the article and seeing what she had to say about culture, i found that she said a lot more “on topic” than i remembered. my response, however, will be pretty short as i didn’t find that much to disagree with. the only parts i really did not agree with were not so much cultural as theological. i don’t know that much about Greek Orthodoxy, but if their theology is truly represented by some of the things that Frederica wrote, then my heart is deeply troubled. but that can be discussed another time and in another venue.

aside from the intermission of Greek Orthodox theology, i enjoyed this article. i think that Frederica had a number of great things to say about the problem at hand, particularly her insight that all nonconformity will eventually end up in conformity. the history, so-to-speak, behind the idea of the cultural (and advertising) “rebel” was immesely helpful to me as i look at the culture around me, particularly the church culture, and try to sort out what Emergents are worried/complaining/reacting about.

in her solution to the problem, she boiled the whole controversy (just as Michael Horton did) down to one simple idea: Scripture. while i would disagree with her interpretations (at least insofar as she wrote) of Scripture, i think that her solution is the only right one. people will not be changed by movie clips, dance, art, rock music, or other cultural fads inserted into worship. they will only be changed by the life-giving, heart-changing Word of God, the only means that is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 ).