On Being Othered by Bad Theology
a guest post by Michelle Van Loon
After reading and endorsing writer and author Michelle Van Loon’s forthcoming book, Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials, I was compelled to reach out to her. A regular part of my work is navigating the internet and interacting with others, discussing the intersection of faith and harm; I advocate for loving our neighbors, which includes preventing harm to marginalized and ostracized communities. I often critique the culture of evangelicalism and Reformed movements like the Acts 29 Network and the Gospel Coalition because they harmed me. I also have to acknowledge that I was a part of them. My responsibility includes remembering that those movements both harmed me and malformed me. So, I must learn about the harm I could cause (and already have) by using Scripture in the ways I was discipled and conditioned to. It’s a shock to the system to learn I could be causing harm in the very ways I advocate against. It’s also an invitation to practice humility and engage in the discomforting growth.
I reached out to Michelle and asked if she’d be willing to write a guest post for the Othered Substack. I also asked if she’d be willing to help me see how normative antisemitic bias could be in Christianity. I started our ZOOM call by saying “I don’t know what I don’t know, and I need help.” We had a conversation that expanded my perspective and widened my welcome. She helped me further divest of toxic theology, which, as I’m continually learning, is a life-long process.
I think you’ll appreciate Michelle’s words here. I hope you’ll learn from them.
On Being Othered By Bad Theology
By Michelle Van Loon
www.michellevanloon.com
“You can fall off a horse from either side.” The woman who spoke these words was an experienced horsewoman as well as a seminary-educated Bible study leader. Her words may have been practical wisdom for a rider, but she spoke them often in the Bible study we co-led to remind us that it was possible to be drawn into theological error by leaning too far in one direction or the other.
I would couple that truism with an additional observation: Theology has consequences. While some may believe that theology is an ivory-tower intellectual pursuit best left to the trained professionals, it has been my experience as a Jewish follower of Jesus that the two dominant streams shaping the Evangelicalism in which I’ve spent most of the last five decades have each had some seismic consequences in real life. What happens in the ivory tower doesn’t stay in the ivory tower. And staying balanced on the horse is a lot harder than it looks.
“Theology has consequences.”
Jewish people comprise about 0.2% of the world’s population, which equates to about 15.8 million souls. Educated estimates suggest that Jewish followers of Jesus worldwide total in the neighborhood of about 350,000–a very small number. One reason it is difficult to get a firm count is because Jewish believers worship in a variety of settings including Messianic, Protestant/Evangelical, and Catholic/Eastern Orthodox congregations. No matter where we worship, the one thing that is true for many of us is that we have experienced friction or estrangement from family and from the broader Jewish community.
The church isn’t always an easy place for a Jewish believer to find a place to belong, in part because of the pull of the theologies on either side of that proverbial horse. On one side of the horse, Dispensationalism, the theology found in pop bestsellers like the 1970’s blockbuster The Late Great Planet Earth and the 1990’s Left Behind series, has influenced everything from Evangelical understanding about how the world works to American foreign policy. On the other side of the horse, Supercessionism, more popularly known as Replacement theology, has a powerful hold on another broad swatch of the Evangelical world.
Both Dispensationalism and Supercessionism have had painful consequences for not only many Jewish followers of Jesus, but have left a negative witness to the wider Jewish community.
At first glance, Dispensationalism seems to be more Israel-friendly, as Israel plays a significant role in its interpretation of how the End of Days will unfold. But under that veneer lurks a deeply troubling set of beliefs. As I wrote in Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials:
The leaders of Neighborhood Church invited a professor from Dallas Theological Seminary to visit the church each year, who unfurled a giant dispensational chart to explain God’s plan for the ages to us. Dispensationalism is a system that describes God’s work in time unfolding in a progressive series of seven historical ages, or “dispensations.” The first four dispensations covered the revelation of God contained in the Old Testament from Adam to Abraham to Moses to David.
Our current age, the fifth in the series, also known as the Church Age, is a pause or parenthesis in the ongoing march toward the end of days. Dispensationalists generally believe that the Church Age began in Acts 2 and will end when all believers will be instantly and supernaturally removed from the earth (the rapture, referenced in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
The first time I laid my eyes on that giant chart, I saw that the Jewish people (also known as “God’s earthly people,” according to the Dispensationalists) faced a grim storyline, while Christians (“God’s heavenly people”) had a much happier one that appeared to include a “Get out of Jail Free” rapture card. I turned to the friend who’d invited me to the church and asked, probably a little too loudly, “As a Jewish believer, exactly where do I fit on that chart?”
She told me I was now in the “Church” category. When I explain to well-meaning gentile Christians that if Adolph Hitler (an antichrist figure if ever there was one!) was rounding up Jews to send them to Auschwitz, he would not care if I confessed that Jesus is my Lord. I’d be in line to the ovens with the rest of my relatives. My faith does not cancel my Jewish identity. It was in that moment, at age nineteen, that I decided I’d better start learning something about theology because the complex yet strangely tidy answers of that dispensational chart left me with lots of questions.
Dispensationalism has impacted my experience as a Jewish follower of Jesus who has worshipped primarily in Evangelical churches. I have heard from my Dispensationalist friends about their undying love for Israel, while at the same time they engage uncritically in sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories that support their hard-right Republican political agenda. This is not new in our current political moment. Antisemitism has been there all along, but certainly the rise of the MAGA movement and its mainstreaming of conspiracy theories has intensified it significantly.
A pendulum swing to the other popular theology in Evangelical circles comes from the Supercessionism at the foundation of Reformed and neo-Reformed theology. This theological point of view, which states that the church has replaced disobedient Israel as the recipient of God’s covenantal promises, has existed in some form since the days of the primitive church. However, it became foundational to Reformation-era Protestantism, particularly in Lutheran and Calvinist streams. The Neo-Reformed movement, which includes Evangelical lightning rods like John MacArthur, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper, as well as the Acts 29 network of churches and the parachurch organization The Gospel Coalition all espouse Replacement theology.
A few years ago, I wrote about some of my issues with Supercessionism in a blog post:
Though it is true that the big C Church is now participating in the mission of proclamation first given to Israel, she does so because she has been grafted into Israel (Rom. 11:17-20), not because God took a chainsaw and stump grinder in order to eradicate Israel from His eternal plans. Replacement theology has long fed anti-Semitic sentiment and is no friend of the Jewish people...Replacement theology taken to a demonic extreme fueled some of the ideology that allowed Nazism to flourish.
This theology has fueled antisemitism from the Crusades to the pogroms to the concentration camps, as well as everything in between. It is at the heart of some of the conspiracy theories fueling the huge spike in antisemitism around the world today.
Dispensationalism has objectified me. Replacement theology has erased me. To borrow Jenai’s apt book title, both camps have othered me.
I am not without hope, though it can be tiring to be in the often-lonely role of encouraging my Gentile siblings in faith to stay on the horse. Most congregants and more than a few church leaders never think through the implications of the theology into which they are born (or born again). Many would never think of themselves as antisemitic, or believe they are teaching hard-core Dispensationalism or Supercessionism until I highlight that they might be teaching one of these things without ever saying the theological words or busting out a chart. Here are some examples:
Speaking as though the God of the Old Testament had a different, much angrier personality than the God of the New Testament
Speaking about the Law as though it is completely irrelevant
Insisting the Old Testament is just for the Jews
Insisting that only the Ten Commandments are relevant–and suggesting really that only nine of the ten are binding on Christians’ lives today. (The one about keeping the Sabbath? Maybe not so much.)
Using the Old Testament in sermons only anecdotally if at all, rather than teaching or preaching from it on its own merits
Calling the Old Testament “legalistic”
Treating the Old Testament, particularly the book of Genesis, as a tool to be used in apologetics debates
Claiming that all the promises God made to the Jewish people in the Old Testament now belong to the Church
Praying promises (such as the trusty graduation card favorite, Jeremiah 29:11) completely out of context, and using them as though they were intended for an individual
Speaking about the Law as though it is the enemy
Using the Pharisees to represent the Old Testament, insisting that the way Jesus spoke to and about them “proves” his feelings about the Law
Preaching or teaching from the New Testament as if it exists in a vacuum, rather than recognizing that as much as a third of its texts directly reference the Old Testament
Ignoring the fact that Jesus is Jewish, and that “Christ” is not his last name but his title, connected to hundreds of Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament
The first Jewish apostle to the Gentiles, Paul, wanted those to whom he was ministering to get this right for their own sakes as well as for the sake of his own people. He wrote, “Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.” (Romans 11:13-14). A commitment to stay on that horse can begin to heal what a whole lot of bad theology and worse practice have wrought.
Michelle Van Loon’s writing is shaped by her deeply rooted faith in Christ, secular Jewish heritage, spiritual hunger, and storyteller’s sensibilities. She has been a regular contributor to Christianity Today and In Touch Magazine. Her books include Becoming Sage: Cultivating Meaning, Purpose, and Spirituality in Midlife; Moments and Days: How Our Holy Celebrations Shape Our Faith; and If Only: Letting Go of Regret, which won an award of merit in the 2015 Christianity Today Book of the Year awards. You can read more from Michelle at michellevanloon.substack.com.
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I am so very grateful for your words and wisdom, Michelle!
As a retired pastor with 40 years of pastoral experience I hold to neither Dispensational Theology or Replacement Theology. Every systematic theology has its blind spots and holes. I guess I’m Reformedbapticostalaliiance. My understanding of just how the Jewish people fit in is confused at best. Just being honest. You’d think with an Under grad degree from Cedarville University and an MDiv from a Baptist Seminary I’d have it all figured out. Your article was refreshing to me. Thank you.