VI. Billy Graham and Experiential-Expressivism

We are back with some more on Lindbeck. I have a few posts on other topics planned in the coming weeks, so I am going to pick up with numbering the posts on Lindbeck, and titling the other posts otherwise. If this gets too confusing, I’ll figure out another approach.

Take a minute and watch this Billy Graham altar call.

The first thing that should be said is that Billy Graham, like his contemporary John F. Kennedy, was a good looking guy. With his square jaw and perfectly coiffed hair, he has the air of a man who has his life together. But what really hits you, square in the nose at times, is the intensity of his address. What is so compelling about Graham is the combination of his content and his delivery. His style is what resounds, even more than his content.

            Graham spoke to his audience directly, making his appeal to follow Christ a personal, 1:1 address. You’ll note if you watch the clip that he speaks in the first person- “I’m talking to you”, “will you listen?” His hint of a southern accent made his appeal even more genuine and sincere. He uses long exaggerated pauses and a gradually rising vocal tone so that he is almost shouting- shouting at you- but the address does not feel as an assault as much as a sincere scold. He is your father, your baseball coach, your homeroom teacher- “Listen! Do the right thing!”

            Graham uses a combination of Bible quotations and personal stories to communicate. The gospel, he says, is the answer to the problem of emptiness, purpose, and meaning that “all young people” experience. “Jesus has everything young people are talking about today!”, he says. Love, peace, discipline, self-denial, a challenge- he offers it all! Jesus is the solution to a problem- a personal problem, that can be solved yourself, if you just accept Jesus in your heart.

            We often do not analyze religious communication in this way, but it is startling when put in these terms. Graham is using the same terms that someone who was selling real estate or cleaning products would use. You have a problem or a need- well let me tell you about the solution! What would otherwise be salesmanship is translated into a religious vernacular, with the goods exchanged not a vacuum cleaner but eternal life in Christ.

            Part of the salesmanship is the urgency of the exchange. Just like with the salesman who offers you a one-time discount, Graham tells his audience that “This is your moment and it may never come again”. The hearer must act now, in order to receive the offer they are hearing about, or its moment may pass.

            The religious goods of conversion, in one way, are well suited to such a strategy. Some modern hearers have called this manipulation, but I think that is too skeptical. Graham is communicating like someone who has privileged insight about something that will change you life. Why would he not match his communication to this grand offer?! And what are life and death if not a time-sensitive matter?

Again, as with my discussion of Keller, none of this is intended as a criticism of Billy Graham. I am hoping to demonstrate what kind of thing these well-known Christian communicators seem to think religion is.

Billy Graham here is acting in a way commensurate with experiential-expressivism. This may come as a bit of a surprise- and indeed Graham may demonstrate the relation between experiential-expressivism and cognitive-propositionalism, as we will discuss in a bit. But for now, let’s review a few aspects of experiential-expressivism:

1.      Religion is located in a pre-cognitive, universal reality. Call it “the holy”, mysterium fasinans et tremendum, or ultimate concern, experiential-expressivism emphasizes that religion is primarily a personal, private experience.

2.     This internal, “prereflective” experience yields external features¹ The external features are what we call “religion”, which is an expression of a pre-existing reality known not through proposition but through personal experience.

3.     The universal reality is refracted through individuals into varied forms of religious experience, but there is one universal reality. This is the form of religion that comes into the world as “God, whatever you call her”. If you have ever participated in an inter-religious prayer service, chances are most of the individuals in attendance are working with an E-E framework.

If cognitive-propositionalism’s true home is the classroom, experiential expressivism takes place under a tree, in a cathedral, or while looking at a beautiful piece of art. Primarily, though, it takes place in the heart of the individual. It is a private, personal experience of religion. Anyone can have a religious experience, anywhere. Church can even be “online” (if you are still lives-treaming church, I will give you my phone number and spend an hour trying to persuade you to cut the damn cord like the nuns in the Sound of Music. There are no good reasons to still be live-streaming, only bad ones, and I mean that). Which leads us to…

4.     Because experiential-expressivism uniquely draws on the modern form of religion that sees religious practice as a private, personal matter, it can quickly be usurped by social realities, both political and economic. With experiential-expressivism, religion becomes a different kind of thing. Lindbeck writes:

This pattern was already well established in American Protestantism by the nineteenth century, but in the past both conservatives and liberals generally thought of the search for individual religious meaning as taking place within the capacious confines of the many varieties of Christianity. As we move into a culturally (even if not statistically) post-Christian period, however, increasing numbers of people regard all religions as possible sources of symbols to be used eclectically in articulating, clarifying, and organizing the experience of the inner self. Religions are seen as multiple suppliers of different forms of a single commodity needed for transcendent self-expression and self-realization. Theologians, ministers, and perhaps above all teachers of religion in colleges and universities whose job is to meet the demand are under great pressures in these circumstances to emphasize the experiential-expressive aspects of religion. It is thus that they can most easily market it.²

The belief that God is met first “in the depths of their souls” is often a hallmark of American evangelicalism. Such a view places conversion primarily in the individual’s heart. Participation in a broader body such as a church is a second, and optional, step.

            As Lindbeck sees it, theologians have unwittingly participated in the embrace of an experiential-expressive model of doctrine. “The exigencies of communicating their messages”, he writes, “in a privatistic cultural and social milieu lead them to commend public and communal traditions as optional aids in individual self-realization rather than as bearers of normative realities to be interiorized”.³

Let’s look at this sermon by Matt Chandler for a second example of experiential-expressivism.

Matt Chandler is Senior Pastor of the Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas and involved with the leadership of the Acts 29 Network.

I found this example through unscientific research; I googled “Matt Chandler sermons”, and this was the first that appeared. I chose Chandler because I wanted an example of E-E that 1. originated in American evangelicalism 2. was affiliated with a well-known figure and 3. was connected to the Acts 29 network. (I think Acts 29 is an important artifact when discussing American evangelicalism, though I don’t have any personal experience with the movement).

Chandler’s sermon is a near-perfect example of experiential-expressivism. It is clear that when Chandler talks about “the gospel”, he is talking about personal conversion. For Chandler, the gospel is primarily about being rescued from personal suffering- bad choices, private grief and sorrow. This need for rescue is universal because sorrow and suffering are universal- “People don’t have a place to go when life punches you in the face”, Chandler says- when you struggle with that third drink, pornography, or some compulsion to relieve the anxiety and stress (29:18-42).

Chandler relies throughout on personal storytelling- about his family, his relationship with his parishioners, his conversation with a man on an airplane (!), and his experience with martial arts to communicate the need everyone has for the gospel.

Chandler’s refrain, repeated throughout, is “you have a soul, and he wants it”. Note here that the pronouns are both personal- you are the one to whom the gospel is addressed, and He (God) wants it. This is a personal exchange between you and the Lord of the universe that you can undertake privately, in your soul.

Just as with Graham, “receiving the gospel” in this way has very practical, even therapeutic effects. It frees us from addiction but it also “eradicates boredom, fills us with adrenaline and a little bit of anxiety” (minute 33), allowing us to live a real, exciting life. “If you are bored as a Christian”, he says, “you’re doing it wrong”.

The gospel is a solution “THAT NO DRINK, NO COMFORT, RELATIONSHIP,AMOUNT OF MONEY, CONTROL WILL SOLVE- BUT ONLY SURRENDER BY FAITH ALONE” (minute 41). I am using “all caps” here, because it must be said that Chandler yells. He yells a lot. He yells at you. He regularly says, in a loud voice- “Look at me!” This is probably not notable to people who attend this form of church, but it is a strategy that Graham also engages. The address- heart to heart, eyeball to eyeball, between you and me but also really between you and God- this is a characteristic of experiential forms of religion, where the exchange between God and the world is mediated through a charismatic preacher who is targeting this message to private individuals.

Both Graham and Chandler demonstrate in their communication goods that accord with Lindbeck’s second form. In Lindbeck’s words, “the exigencies of communicating their messages in a privatistic cultural and social milieu lead them to commend public and communal traditions as optional aids in individual self-realization rather than as bearers of normative realities to be interiorized”.⁴

In our next discussion, we will take up the limitations of this approach and what it means for catechesis in the local church.

As always, leave me some comments so we can dig into these issues further.

1. Lindbeck 21.

2. Lindbeck 22. I wrote a piece for The Hedgehog Review which makes just this argument, even though I wrote it before I had read Lindbeck. As far as I can tell, about four people read this piece, but it remains one of my favorites: https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-use-and-abuse-of-history. Let me know if its paywalled.

3. Lindbeck 23.

4. Lindbeck 23.