Like most people, I’ve always been in the habit of aligning myself to a movement or subculture. For example, back in the 1970s, when I first got into pop music, I liked “glam rock”. Then, I was deeply disappointed to hear glam rock people, such as David Bowie, getting into soul music. And in the mid 1970s, I was into progressive rock. And again, I was a little peeved when punk and new wave emerged. I got into that for a while, and I’d see artists as traitors if they started moving into mainstream pop 😀. An example was The Boomtown Rats with Rat Trap. I hated that song – and their performance on Top of the Pops.
I became an evangelical Christian when I was 18 in 1980. And even within the evangelical scene, we had lots of movements and subcultures. I had a lot of respect for the older folk, and many of them were into what was known as the modern reformed movement. But it began around the 1950s, and maybe at one time, that was seen as a new thing, and older, more fundamentalist groups were suspicious of it.
I watched an episode of a UK TV series on Christianity last night, featuring Oxford University historian, Diarmuid McCullagh. This particular episode was about evangelicalism. And he pointed out that much of its success lies in its diversity, and the fact that new movements constantly emerge.
So, even if I sometimes see newer movements as being a little silly or sinister, they tend to feature people with a lot of enthusiasm who reach out to God rather than settling down into their traditions. And over time, they mature. But perhaps they can grow a little stale over time too. In recent times, I’ve become a little more open to listen to a wider range or perspectives on all sorts of things. Maybe part of the reason is that we have instant access to so many viewpoints with YouTube, AI and so on.
But the key thing is our personal relationship with Jesus Himself. Movements and fads might assist us in some way because it helps us to fellowship with each other, refresh our understanding of Scripture and spread the good news. But I’d much rather identify myself as redeemed rather than reformed, though the reformed movement is still my comfort zone 😀.
Hibernia Gospel 