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A Biblically based
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Robert
Schuller and The Seeker
Sensitive Church
The
Roots and Fruits of Robert Schuller's Verstion of Theological Liberalism
by
Bob DeWaay
"For since in the wisdom of God the world through
its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the
foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed
Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ
crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to
those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God.” (1Corinthians 1:21-24)
Two
men met another man as they were walking down a road. They were having a
private discussion when the third man began questioning them. The third
man soon dominated the conversation. Throughout the rest of their
journey, the man began with the books of Moses and proceeded to explain
to them, verse by verse, all of the Old Testament passages that pertained
to the Jewish Messiah. It turned out the third man was Jesus the Messiah.
The resurrected Jewish Messiah had joined them on their journey and
preached a sermon from Old Testament messianic prophecy. Here is how the
two described their experience of this talk on the road to Emmaus:
"Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us
on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” (Luke
24:32).
We
do not have a transcription of the exact passages Jesus cited or how He
explained them. Yet we have enough information in the New Testament about
Messianic prophecy to reconstruct a similar sermon. Did you know that in
many of the largest so-called "evangelical” churches in America
such a sermon would never be tolerated? Hundreds of thousands of
professed Christians go to churches where Jesus’ sermon on the road
to Emmaus would considered "irrelevant” to the "felt
needs” of the congregation. The hearts of church-goers no longer
"burn” in conviction, joy, or intense devotion to God and His
Word, because it is seldom heard. If the pastor of one of these churches
announced a sermon that would outline all of the Old Testament prophecies
about Messiah, the likely result would be yawns, moans, and bewilderment
over how the church lost its "vision,” or mass exodus to a
church that understood the "needs” of modern
"seekers.”
How
did we get to this situation? I credit Robert Schuller as the key person
to have orchestrated this previously unimaginable change in evangelical
Christianity. It was Schuller’s bold move, beginning in 1955, to
integrate the positive thinking philosophy of Norman Vincent Peale with
savvy, business oriented marketing techniques that brought thousands into
what eventually became the Crystal Cathedral. In the process he also
developed his hugely successful television broadcast. Though he did not
coin the phrase "seeker-sensitive,” his success and ideas have
inspired many of the most successful "seeker” churches in America.
Robert
Schuller and Old Fashioned Liberalism
Robert
Schuller does not claim to be a liberal. He still is affiliated with a
Reformed denomination1 and willingly calls himself
"evangelical.” Yet when Schuller appeared on Larry King Live
just before Christmas 1999, I heard him proclaim, "I am not trying
to convert anyone from another religion, I am only try to reach people
who have no religion.” If so, he has just ruled out billions of
people as possible recipients of the gospel. The vast majority of Americans
claim to be Christian and most of the rest claim some religion. So also
the majority of the people throughout the world have some religious
affiliation. The idea that one ought not try to convert others to the
Christian faith is liberal to the core.
Dr.
Schuller has other things in common with religious liberalism. In 1982,
Schuller wrote a book claiming that the church needed to be reformed
based on the psychological theory of self-esteem.2 He has
often been quoted as suggesting that Christian theology ought to be more
man-centered rather than God-centered. As we shall show, Schuller’s
teachings have their roots in early twentieth century liberalism. Many
people know that Norman Vincent Peale was a key person in the development
of Robert Schuller’s ministry, but most do not know the roots of
Peale’s and after him Schuller’s approach to Christianity.
In
his book, Your Church Has a Fantastic Future,3 Dr. Schuller
describes how he started with $500 and a dream. Eventually he built the
Crystal Cathedral and his multimillion
dollar Television ministry. He rented a drive in theater in 1955 and
began to take Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s message of positive
thinking to the people. He writes:
Then I proceeded to spend about $50 for
brochures. Hoping to impress unchurched people, I wrote to Dr. Norman
Vincent Peale, who wrote back a marvelous statement with his permission
to quote extensively. So I grabbed hold of his coattails.4
In
1957 he persuaded Peale to speak at his drive in church.5 From
Peale he learned a key lesson about appealing to the
"unchurched.” The lesson was, "Jesus never called a
person a sinner.”6 This insight led to Schuller’s
philosophy of possibility thinking and self-esteem. Schuller writes:
"[P]ossibility thinking and self-esteem theology can both be summarized
in this single sentence: The ‘I am’ determines the ‘I
can.’”7 His idea was that the key to making
positive thinking work out practically was to develop high self-esteem.
He imagines that people to not realize their full potential because of
low self-esteem.
Dr.
Schuller usually does not come out and deny any key evangelical beliefs.
He says that he believes in the various points of orthodoxy. He even
interacts with his critics who claim he skips essential aspects of the
gospel. For example, when someone questions him on not preaching that we
must deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus, he is ready
with an explanation that possibility thinking is doing just that:
"To deny yourself means daring to ask God, ‘What do you want
me to do’?”8 This sets in motion God’s
answer. Eventually the question leads to this: "[Y]ou’re going
to get a dream. And anytime a
dream comes from God, it is going to be humanly impossible to
accomplish.”9 This all leads to his version of
"faith” and success through possibility thinking and
self-esteem. So through this clever process, taking up one’s cross
and denying self actually means letting God make you more successful than
you ever thought possible and having high self-esteem. He then goes on to
scold those of us who still think that Jesus’ point is that the
cross is an instrument of death and that we must die to our old sinful
self. He claims such preaching produces "sick people.”10
Similarly,
Dr. Schuller is ready with versions of the 10 Commandments and other
Biblical issues that fit his theology. This is Schuller’s nice,
user friendly version of the decalogue: "The answer is simple. The
Ten Commandments are given to us in order to show us how to live in such
an ethical behavioral pattern that we will feel good about ourselves. The
Ten Commandments are not 10 negative restrictions.”11
The sin nature gets a similar treatment. While not denying its existence,
Dr. Schuller defines sin as a lack of faith. Our sin is that,
"We’re conceived and born without faith, without any
belief.”12 So we need faith, and most importantly we
need to believe in ourselves (and God of course). Since Dr. Schuller
publicly claims to not seek the conversion of people from other
religions, obviously faith in God need not be described in Christian
terms. So whatever issue comes along, possibility thinking and
self-esteem have the answer.
The
Legacy and Roots of Dr. Schuller’s Ideas
Having
settled these issues, the rest of the book tells us how to be successful
and concludes with testimonies
of dozens of successful pastors who got their church growth ideas from
Dr. Schuller. C. Peter Wagner, a key promoter of modern church growth
theory, sings the praises of Dr. Schuller in the preface of the book.13
Bill Hybels, the pastor of the now famous Willow
Creek Community
Church in Illinois, is among many notables who
claim to at least partially owe their success to Schuller’s
principles. According to Hybels’ testimony,
he got his inspiration from one of Dr. Schuller’s church growth
seminars.14
It
is undeniable that Robert Schuller started a trend that grew into a huge
movement that is now engulfing much of evangelicalism. I know from
personal experience that evangelical seminaries are promoting the latest
seeker-sensitive approaches to church growth as if it were a do or die
situation. During the last seven years, I sat through many classes and
seminars promoting this approach. In preparation for this article I ran a
search on the seminary library computer and found 400 books on the topic.
As I paged through dozens of these books I encountered a confusing array
of opinions. One book said that one should never call the church
"the family of God” since families are closed units and people
will not feel welcome. Then another said that young wandering souls are
looking for a sense of family. Another suggested that if a church is
going to ever have over 200 members, the pastor must make it clear from
the beginning that he will do no hospital visitation, personal
counseling, or personal, pastoral care of the members. His role is to
build a team, with him as the manager.
Though
confusing, there is a unifying theme: in America, nothing succeeds
like success. When I was in Bible college in the 1970’s, the
visiting speakers were often the latest successful pastors whose churches
grew to 2,000. Many at that time
succeeded by buying a fleet of old school buses and going around town
offering to bring people’s kids to Sunday School so the parents
could sleep in. We were expected to listen in envy of the glorious
success of these contemporary church growth heroes. Soon the whole bus
ministry thing became passé and something else took its place. When I
went back to seminary, eighteen years after graduating from Bible
college, I was confronted with a whole new generation of super-star
pastors to emulate. These new heroes have found a new key, the
"unchurched” are "seekers” who will come if the
service is "relevant.”
The
year I graduated from seminary (1999) I heard a young pastor in chapel
who had managed to start a new congregation from scratch and had come
back to tell us of his success. His message was entitled "Thinking
Outside the Box.” Supposedly Jesus was good at thinking outside the
box (notice the similarity to "possibility thinking”). The way
this young man practiced his theory, was that he had a Sunday morning
service with coffee tables and coffee. Those who come to the meeting view
clips of Hollywood movies and discuss
what point they think the movie is trying to make. Schuller got his start
in a drive in movie theater preaching possibility thinking and look at
his success. Maybe this young man is on to something!
What
I think is this: most of those jumping on this modern bandwagon do not
realize that this is simply old-fashioned liberalism. Sadly, some
probably do know this and simply do not care. We shall see this by
examining the roots of the movement.
The
Harry Emerson Fosdick Connection
After
the modernist controversy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there
was a huge upheaval in American Christianity. The modernists denied the
authority and inerrancy of Scripture. Those who opposed them were called
"Fundamentalists,” so named after a document called "The
Fundamentals.” These were simply the basics of the Christian faith
that had been believed since the time
of the apostles. Creation versus evolution was a key issue, but not the
only one. Even the deity and resurrection of Christ were questioned. What
emerged from this was the birth of many denominations we now know as
"evangelical.” On the other hand, liberals took control of the
seminaries and headquarters of most of the older, main-line
denominations.
A
key modernist of the early twentieth century who was perhaps the most
successful of all liberals (at that time)
in gaining a national audience was Harry Emerson Fosdick. Fosdick was
able to take his liberal message to the masses at a time when most modernists were fighting behind
the scenes battles to control denominations and their seminaries. Several
historians have commented on this. For example, Leonard Sweet writes,
"Suffice it to say that while a few modernist preachers like Harry
Emerson Fosdick, Norman Vincent Peale, Ralph Sockman, and Robert Schuller
pioneered in the use of mass communications media (radio, television,
publishing ventures, computer mailings, etc.), by and large modernist
clergy were content to remain inky-fingered, acting as if the
communications revolution had never taken place.”15
Fosdick
strongly believed in his modernism and was willing to battle for it. He
fought battles in the Presbyterian and Northern Baptist denominations on
behalf of modernism against fundamentalism.16 In the midst of
the modernist controversy in the Presbyterian church, Fosdick wrote an
article in the New York Times rebutting a previous article by William
Jennings Bryan that had called evolution "unscientific and
irreligious.”17 Fosdick promoted the theory of
evolution. He soon after preached his most famous sermon, "Shall the
Fundamentalists Win?”18 Fosdick’s point was to say
that the fundamentalists could not "drive out from the Christian
churches all the consecrated souls who do not agree with their theory of
inspiration.”19 This was a key shot fired in the
fundamentalist-modernist war. Fosdick was eventually driven out of the
Presbyterian pulpit, but this was merely the beginning of his successful
career. After other battles, and with the considerable financial help of
John D. Rockefeller, Fosdick established the interdenominational Riverside Church in New York.20
A
key question that comes to mind is: if you no longer believe in the
inspiration of Scripture, what do you preach? Fosdick had no problems
with finding sermon topics. For one thing, he did not deny everything in
the Bible. He had his own way of believing it. As is typical with
liberalism, rather than believing the Bible is the word of God, he
believed it contained the word of God.21 So the Bible is still
useful, but the preacher evidently decides which parts are useful.
Fosdick believed in the resurrection, for he wrote "I believe in
Christ, his deity, his sacrificial saviorhood, his resurrected and
triumphant life, his rightful Lordship. . .”22 This
sounds good, until one finds out that he did not believe in
Christ’s bodily resurrection which the New Testament writers so
steadfastly affirmed as necessary to the faith. Fosdick said, "I
believe in the persistence of personality, but I do not believe in the
resurrection of the flesh.”23 The following explanation
by Fosdick’s biographer is enlightening:
Fosdick could not believe that Jesus was virgin
born. He did not ridicule those who did, but he was adamant that such
belief was not essential to acceptance of Christian faith. . . . Fosdick
doubted whether Jesus ever thought of himself as the Messiah; perhaps he
did, but more probably "Jesus’ disciples may have read this
into his thinking. . . .”24
The
modernist can still preach about God, Christ, faith, and even make use of
the Bible. The key is to center the message on human needs and understand
Christian ministry as a "helping profession.”
To
this end, psychology is a key aspect of Christian ministry for the
liberal or modernist preacher. Historian Glenn T. Miller sees religious
liberalism as one source of the professional approach to religious education.
He writes, "American religious liberalism was dissatisfied with
traditional pastoral care.”25 This led to the,
"understanding of the minister as an advisor on life’s way. .
. .”26 Glenn Miller provides the following insight into
Fosdick’s role in this:
Harry Emerson Fosdick in the North, and Theodore
Adams in the South, incorporated counseling into their ministries. Both
Adams and Fosdick consulted psychologists and psychiatrists, served their
churches as counselors, and, more importantly, used psychological
insights in their widely imitated preaching.27
So
for modernists, helping people along the way with whatever means are
available through the culture is a key to preaching and ministry. As for
Fosdick and the Fundamentalists, Fosdick wrote "We won our
battle.”28 His biographer, Robert Moats Miller shares an
interesting insight on this matter:
[He] was correct only in the limited sense that
the liberals were not driven from the churches. I may very well be that
for tens of millions in every era Fosdick’s liberalism could never
adequately answer the terrors of human existence. Nevertheless, when he
added, "it was one of the most necessary theological battles every
fought,” he was right on the money, for millions found in his
evangelical liberalism the only religious answer possible for them.29
Robert
Moats Miller wrote his biography on Fosdick from the perspective of an
admirer. His understanding that there were many who needed
Fosdick’s approach as "the only religious answer
possible” is a key point. It likely is based on the fact that once
one accepts a supposedly true theory of evolution and a historically and
scientifically flawed Bible, one must either reject Christian religion or
find a way to change its essence so that is no longer conflicts with the
modernist understanding of the "facts.” Fosdick provided a way
to simultaneously hold to liberal assumptions and still have a version of
the Christian religion. Norman Vincent Peale, whom Fosdick knew and
admired,30 carried on a similar version of liberalism geared
for the mass media. Peale’s profound influence on Schuller is often
attested by Dr. Schuller himself.
Robert
Schuller has followed in the footsteps of Peale and Fosdick and provided
a religious approach for those who normally would reject traditional
Christian theology. He often has said (when asked about his version of
church and Christianity) that he is a last stop for those for whom all
other approaches have not worked. People will come to his church who have
given up on church (or as he recently said on religion). Of course, the
unspoken assumption is that the reason Biblical Christianity does not
"work” for many, is that they refuse to believe its message.
Schuller’s approach puts aside the message that is so undesirable to
many modern religious consumers and replaces it with self-esteem and
possibility thinking. This is squarely in the liberal tradition of having
little to say about eternal judgment, the blood atonement, or the bodily
resurrection of Christ, but having loads to say about how one can have a
better life in this world.
What
is Gained?
If
Robert Moats Miller was right that Fosdick’s liberal approach is
the "only religious answer possible” for some, then Schuller
and the his new legions of pastoral followers are the current providers
of that answer. Others have noticed this. For example, David Wells
writes:
His [Harry Emerson Fosdick’s] theology of
the person was built on the ideas of the immanence of God in human
personality and the perfectibility of human nature. He spoke enthusiastically
of the unlimited inner potential that only had to be found and
cultivated. . . . From Fosdick the ideas traveled to Norman Vincent Peale
and then to Robert Schuller, and now they have become commonplace
throughout much of the evangelical world.31
The
reason that the modernist approach is deemed the last ditch, possible
answer for those who flock to what are now called "seeker
sensitive” churches, is that so many contemporary people refuse to
accept the Biblical answers to their questions.
Human
potential as understood in Schuller’s twin foundations of
self-esteem and possibility thinking is an alternative to the cross, not
an expression of it as Schuller’s theological legerdemain would
make us think. The Biblical message of the cross speaks of human
depravity, the wrath of God against sin, the need for substitutionary
atonement and the bodily resurrection from the dead unto either eternal
life or eternal damnation. This is not a message of the unlimited
potential of humans through positive thinking. "Seekers” as
they are now mislabeled, are those who, according to Schuller himself,
are not going to accept the two millennia old message of Biblical
Christianity. But they will come to church under the right conditions.
This
is what ties the modern seeker movement to historical liberalism. The
goal is to get people to be "churched” even though the
inspiration of Scripture and the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) are
set aside. The Bible only "contains” the word of God and the
preacher is at liberty to ignore any Scripture that does not fit his
purpose of church growth and religious success. Dr. Schuller has
adamantly rejected any idea that he is obligated to preach everything in
the Bible. Does he believe in a literal hell? This is very difficult to determine
because one never hears him preach about it. At least Fosdick came out in
public with all his beliefs and stood by them. Schuller is more of a
politician, keeping a smile and a handshake always ready while skirting
controversial questions. Schuller’s approach to his modernism has
done what Fosdick’s could never do: brought evangelicals and
liberals together.
The
liberals of the 1920’s never thought of Schuller’s brilliant
move. Rather than deny any Biblical doctrines and thus rile the ranks of
the traditionalists and believers in Biblical inerrancy, let the
doctrines die the death of neglect. Keep the congregation so enamored
with brilliant homilies on "Five Ways to Deal with Stress in
the Workplace” and "Nine
Ways to Envision a Brighter Future”
and they will never think about such matters as the wrath of God, eternal
judgment, atonement, or heaven and hell. Does anyone seem to care whether
Dr. Schuller and his hordes of evangelical copy cats really believe any
of these doctrines? For decades liberals have claimed that most New
Testament doctrines are irrelevant. Judging by how many modern
evangelicals go to churches where doctrine is considered passé,
contemporary evangelicals must have decided the liberals were right.
Conclusion
The
greatest problem with all of this is that we have radically changed the
key categories in the minds of the contemporary evangelical church. For
example, previous generations of evangelicals thought the key categories
were "saved and lost.” Now they are "churched and unchurched.”
When I came to Christ in Iowa
in 1971, nearly everyone in our community was "churched.” At
that time Bible believing
Christians understood there to be two categories of people, the saved and
the lost. Whether or not one was in church was immaterial. I grew up in a
church that gave lip service to the facts of Christianity, but was told
by a pastor when I was 16 years old that these were in fact false. There
was no creation of the world out of nothing, no miracles, no virgin
birth, and no bodily resurrection from the dead. Christianity and the
Bible were there to help us live a better life. Not realizing what the
categories were, I found myself in the middle of modernism and
liberalism. My response was to exit the church immediately. Being
"churched,” in my mind was quite worthless if none of the
things churches supposedly existed to promote were true.
So
as a new Christian four years later, I realized that the problem was that
we had churches full of lost people who would go to hell if they did not
hear the gospel, believe and repent. Nothing could be clearer. Many
churches were pastored by individuals who were themselves unregenerate.
That is the legacy that the fundamentalist/modernist battle had left. As
Fosdick pointed out, the modernists stayed in most of the churches and
controlled the seminaries. They won the battle in most old line
denominations. Consequently, when people like I was in 1971 came to
Christ, we never considered going back to those denominations. We were
hungry for God’s word and wanted to be challenged week by week to
grow into conformity to Christ’s purposes.
Thus
it is with great alarm and sorrow that I write this article. Masses of
churches and denominations who once were proud to have left the
modernists behind and went out on their own to promote Biblical orthodoxy
have now either wittingly or unwittingly joined the modernists. The
categories that I now hear, not occasionally, but constantly in
evangelical circles, are "churched and unchurched.” Evidently
it is assumed that since we call ourselves "evangelical” (like
Schuller) we have something to offer. If people are in our churches they
are imagined to be better off than if they are not, regardless of whether
or not they are being confronted with God’s word and His holy
claims on their lives. This assumption is false. As in my personal
experience, unregenerates are often further from the gospel when they are
"churched” but not hearing God’s word than when they are
"unchurched.” At least in the later condition they know they
are not Christian. False assurance is worse than no assurance.
"Seekers” are really unsaved sinners who may never find out
they are unsaved sinners because they are becoming so adept at dealing
with stress in the workplace through the help of the savvy, therapeutically
oriented pastor. When life seems to be getting better with a little help
from the church, who needs to concern oneself with heaven and hell,
especially if one is never told they exist.
We must
return to the only means that God has ordained for bringing salvation to
the lost. It is outlined in the verses cited at the beginning of the
article. It is the message of the cross: "[B]ut we preach Christ
crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to
those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God.” (1Corinthians 1:23,24).
Issue
56 - January/February 2000
End Notes
- The Reformed Church of America
- Robert
Schuller, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, (Waco, Word Books,
1982). See Bob DeWaay, Self-esteem, the New Christian
"Virtue” Part 2, in Critical Issues Commentary, Issue 18,
November, 1993; for a critique of this book and Schuller’s
self-esteem philosophy.
- Robert
Schuller, Your Church as a Fantastic Future, (Ventura: Regal Books,
1986).
- Ibid. 29.
- Ibid. 30.
- Ibid. 115.
- Ibid. 117.
- Ibid. 122.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 123.
- Ibid. 124.
- Ibid. 120.
- Ibid. 15-17.
- Ibid. 227,228.
- Leonard I.
Sweet, "The Modernization of Protestant Religion in America”
in Altered Landscapes, David W. Lotz ed., (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids,
1989) 28.
- Robert Moats
Miller, "Harry Emerson Fosdick: Preacher, Pastor,
Prophet” (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) see
chapters 8 and 9, 112-173.
- Ibid. 115.
- Ibid.
- Quoted by
Miller, Ibid. 115.
- Ibid. 211-222.
- Ibid. 403.
- Quoted by
Miller, Ibid.129.
- Quoted by
Miller, Ibid. 411.
- Ibid. 409.
- Glenn T.
Miller, "Professionals and Pedagogues: A Survey of Theological
Education,” in Op.Cit. Lotz, 196.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 196,
197.
- Quoted from Fosdick,
Robert Moats Miller, 173.
- Ibid.
- Ibid. 560.
- David F.
Wells, No Place
for Truth, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) 178.
Published
by Twin City Fellowship
Critical Issues Commentary
P.O. Box 26127
St. Louis Park, MN 55426
952-935-3100
past...@twincityfellowship.com
Unless otherwise noted, all Scriptures taken from the New American
Standard Bible, © Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1988, 1995 The Lockman Foundation.
Copyright
© 1992-2008 Critical Issues Commentary
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