I really like how John Webster describes Barth’s understanding against the Liberal Protestantism of his day. Ironically, I think, that the way Barth understood the Liberal Protestants of his day, could (should) be the way (by and large) that we understand American Evangelicals of our day [please note: I am speaking in generalities, there are obviously many exceptions to this amongst American Evangelicals, just as there was exceptions to the Liberal 
Protestants in Barth’s day]. In fact, I think this dovetails nicely with the post I just posted on Occupy Wall Street. It gets to the question of how it is that “good” honest hard working (even Christian) people can be duped into thinking that the aformentioned attributes serve as the garb that justifies their place in society (i.e. as good honest hard working folk). There is always room for conviction and self-“criticality;” I know we don’t like this, and I know that much of this ultimately bothers our sensibilities; but we are Christians, people ofΒ love and truth (insofar as we participate in God’s life in Christ).
As I’ve already alluded to, the following is Webster commenting on Barth and his critique of the Liberal Protestants (which I am lifting and applying to American Evangelicals). This is intended to decenter our trust in ourselves, and instead cause us to throw ourselves at the mercy of God in Christ. This is intended to turn our lights on so that we can more critically see how what counts as Christian and Ethical (in America and the West), probably is not as ethical and Christian as we think. This is intended to highlight how it is that “we” so easily become the standard for what is good and right in the world instead of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
[A] large part of Barth’s distaste is his sense that the ethics of liberal Protestantism could not be extricated from a certain kind of cultural confidence: ‘[H]ere was … a human culture building itself up in orderly fashion in politics, economics, and science, theoretical and applied, progressing steadily along its whole front, interpreted and ennobled by art, and through its morality and religion reaching well beyond itself toward yet better days.’ The ethical question, on such an account, is no longer disruptive; it has ‘an almost perfectly obvious answer’, so that, in effect, the moral life becomes too easy, a matter of the simple task of following Jesus.
Within this ethos, Barth also discerns a moral anthropology with which he is distinctly ill-at-ease. He unearths in the received Protestant moral culture a notion of moral subjectivity (ultimately Kantian in origin), according to which ‘[t]he moral personality is the author both of the conduct with which the ethical question is concerned and of the question itself. Barth’s point is not simply that such an anthropology lacks serious consideration of human corruption, but something more complex. He is beginning to unearth the way in which this picture of human subjectivity as it were projects the moral self into a neutral space, from which it can survey the ethical question ‘from the viewpoint of spectators’. This notion Barth reads as a kind of absolutizing of the self and its reflective consciousness, which come to assume ‘the dignity of ultimateness’. And it is precisely this — the image of moral reason as a secure centre of value, omnicompetent in its judgements — that the ethical question interrogates. [John Webster, Barth’s Moral Theology: Human Action in Barth’s Thought, 35-6]
The ‘Human culture building itself up’ was the German one (for Barth) that ultimately expressed itself in German bourgeois society, and ultimately Nazi Germany. For Barth, for the Liberal Protestant, because of the collapse of the Christian self into the self as the moral self; there no longer remained space for Christ to break in and speak a fresh word of holiness over and against the established norms of what the Liberal Protestant had come to already think of what counted as such. In other words, Barth was against a What Would Jesus Do? society.
I am appropriating this critique from Barth (a la Webster) for the American Evangelical in particular. We have come to think that what counts as moral is captured by the symbol ‘Conservative’. It is this absolutized ‘Conservative Self’ that presumes that what it means to be moral, and Christian is to ask, simply, ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ This perfectly illustrates Barth’s critique of the German Liberal Protestant. For them, as for us, to be Christian, was to be nationalist, exceptional, and normal. It is this posture that negates any space for the Word of God to break in on all of these norms or the status quo; since the status quo is synonymous with being Christian. And it is this self-evidential situation which allows for atrocities to take place in the name of Christ; through the “absolute self.”
Is what I am getting at overstated?
I do not think it overstated. “Christian culture,” like all cultures, tend to legalism almost as a default setting (human culture building itself up?). C.S. Lewis said that if you read a new book, it is good to read two older books (or at least one!), to not be caught up with the short-sightedness of our own day. So, in that vein, here are two items referencing older writings that bear on that subject. First, from Oswald Chambers “My Utmost for His Highest”:
“If the closest relationships of life clash with the claims of Jesus Christ, He says it must be instant obedience to Himself. Discipleship means personal, passionate devotion to a Person, Our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a difference between devotion to a Person and devotion to principles or to a cause. Our Lord never proclaimed a cause; He proclaimed personal devotion to Himself. To be a disciple is to be a devoted love-slave of the Lord Jesus. Many of us who call ourselves Christians are not devoted to Jesus Christ. No man on earth has this passionate love to the Lord Jesus unless the Holy Ghost has imparted it to him. We may admire Him, we may respect Him and reverence Him, but we cannot love Him. The only Lover of the Lord Jesus is the Holy Ghost, and He sheds abroad the very love of God in our hearts. Whenever the Holy Ghost sees a chance of glorifying Jesus, He will take your heart, your nerves, your whole personality, and simply make you blaze and glow with devotion to Jesus Christ.β
And second, a short review I gave of Charles Sheldon’sΒ “In His Steps”:
“I just finished reading Charles Sheldon’s classic “In His Steps.” It described an American Christian community in the latter part of the nineteenth century that could be described EXACTLY as enumerated in Smith’s five points of moralistic, therapeutic deism. This religious order, especially in the life of the main character, Reverend Henry Maxwell, is totally disrupted by a dying vagrant who appears at the end of a church service. Interestingly, the answer to the spiritual crisis that ensues is “What Would Jesus Do?” This WWJD, however, is portrayed as an invitation to sacrifice one’s life instead of seeking self-actualization, to take up one’s cross and follow in the steps of Jesus, joining Him where the Spirit leads, no matter where. The story is poignant, full of the joy of sharing in Christ’s sufferings – the paradoxical life of a disciple of Jesus. Instead of a mantra to hold one to a list of rules or exalt Jesus as a moral example, WWJD becomes the byword of a people surrendering their true lives in Christ to Christ, no matter the opposition from within and without, no matter the loss of prestige, comfort or riches, seeking only the true riches of solidarity with our Lord and Savior. It is somewhat old-fashioned in it’s language, and dated in some of it’s emphases, but it has the aroma of Christ about it nevertheless.”
The Christian life is not about building a “safe” Christian culture, but a life safe in the arms of Jesus.
Bobby, being embedded in the heart of evangelicalism, I can affirm Webster’s (and your) insights. We have been baptized by Schleiermacher and Ritchl in so many ways. There are exceptions, but they prove the rule, I think. –Mark
@Jerome,
Thanks for the comment. Yes, there is a more proper way to frame WWJD; like having a robust participationist christology and soteriology in place, and a Spirit filled life that seeks to obediently live from Christ’s life for us (like take up your cross daily and follow Christ).
And I totally agree that our stability should not be in the things of this world, but in the life of God, particularly through the mediated life of God in Christ. It is this kind of order that we can approach creation (ourselves and others) with the Apostle Paul’s admonition of using this world as if it is passing away I Cor 7.
@Mark,
Hey, great to hear from you! Thank you for the affirmation π , and I think you’re right about being impacted by Schleiermacher’s form of pietism; wherein my/our ‘feeling’ becomes the standard through which we live our lives. But I know that we also don’t want to overstate in particular the kind of Sch articulated and the popular kind that we see in America today (which is much more emotive and experience oriented). Nevertheless, I think understanding Sch can definitely inform and help us understand our own situation today (all I’ve really read of Sch are some quotes and chunks from his works; and then Barth’s Theology of Schleiermacher).
I listened to a little of your interview with Mike Horton on WHI, sounds good; I’ll have to finish that ASAP.