Beatnik Christianity Reimagines and Recycles the Word Heretic

Right belief (orthodoxy) is to heresy as right conduct (orthopraxy) is to… what? The very fact that Christianity doesn’t have an obvious correlative term tells you all you need to know. Instead of coining a new term, however, a more subversive path forward may be to sync belief and conduct by broadening out heretic to include any professing Jesus follower who severely deviates from The Way of Jesus. Deny the existence of any kind of supernatural reality or call for genocide? Both are beyond the pale. Of course, the troublesome part of this plan is the word heretic itself.

There comes a time in every deconstructing Christian’s life when he must pull a Derrida. By that I mean begrudgingly using a word but crossing it out to show it’s “inadequate yet necessary.”1 For me it’s heretic. There’s so much hurt, ambiguity, and baggage around the word that I’m quite reluctant to use it, but there’s something important there for which we need a word. Surely there’s some kind of shared, basic vision for convictions and conduct that congeal to form the covenant community’s identity.2 If so, then we need a word for that which truly doesn’t comport.3

Three key caveats are needed. First, it’s never acceptable for a person to judge the eternal status of anyone else’s salvation. It doesn’t matter if it’s Adolf Hitler. That responsibility falls to God alone, so I’m neither questioning nor condemning anyone’s eternal soul. Second, there is no implied spirit of vitriolic defensiveness or pious resentment. If it’s possible to use the H-bomb with actual civility, that’s the vibe. Third, the term does not sanction violence like the lore about St. Nick punching Arius at the Council of Nicaea.4 The Way of Jesus is about radical love, not violence.

With those boundaries in place, I’m trying to walk an impossibly fine line. We need a word with gravitas that a) isn’t used to bludgeon people yet b) captures a sense of literally being anti-Christ while professing to follow Jesus. Yes, there’s room for thoughtful disagreement about how best to faithfully follow The Way of Jesus. We need a generous orthodoxy, as Brian McLaren put it, and together with it a generous orthopraxy. But we also need a word for emphatically denying Jesus with our beliefs and/or behaviors.5 The best I’ve got is a reimagined and recycled heretic.

The original beatniks were known to be contumacious.6 If any external limitation whatsoever was put on them, their automatic impulse was to violate it–even if it was perfectly reasonable. Sorry, but that’s dumb and petulant. This is an area where beatnik Christianity needs to be more mature. I don’t think we should shy away from heavy words like orthodoxy and orthopraxy because they’re messy or have been misused. Instead we need to have ongoing discussions about what our interconnected orthodoxy and orthopraxy should be for faithfully following Jesus.