I offer reflections on the relationship between the Christian churches and America. It is long. This exploration will involve some historical reflections on that relationship. However, it has motivated me to consider the shifting form of secularity in America and the way the churches have responded to each form.
First, we need to consider the unique historical relationship between the churches and the formation of the United States.
Respect for the reality of the influence of Christianity upon the founding of America unites the political Right in America. Some on the political Left share this respect, recognizing that a decline in religion is not good for the country.
The most important achievements of modern times are the universal declarations of human rights, the decipherment of nature according to mathematics, and the United States of America.[1] Such is the legacy of the Enlightenment. Such are the external elements of secularity and modernity. Such external elements have had important implications for the formation of culture.
America is an expression of a form of secular humanism that has been healthy.[2] Since some on the political Right might dispute this idea, I want to spend some time reflecting upon this form of secularity. The United States historically does not offer “toleration,” which assumes a religious establishment, but religious freedom to all.
In the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights authored by George Mason, James Madison successfully changed the language from “toleration” to “free exercise of religion.” Its point is that the duty we owe to the creator and the manner of discharging it arises from reason and conviction or belief, not from force or violence, and that therefore all people are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience. Therefore, all persons are to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.
The 1786 Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson, was a natural follow-on to the Virginia Declaration of Rights by disestablishing the church. It declared that the government shall compel no one to support any religious worship, place, or ministry, nor suffer on account of religious beliefs. All people are free to profess their opinion in matters of religion in a way that does not affect positively or negatively their capacity to participate in civil society.
This concept of religious liberty and freedom of conscience was historically rooted in a Christian anthropology. As the Westminster Confession of Faith proclaimed in 1646, “God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from doctrines and commandments of” humanity. The Virginia Statute’s first article explained that God has created the mind free, and that attempts to influence it by government coercion or inhibiting their participation in civil society produce hypocrisy and meanness, both of which are a departure from the plan of the author of Christianity, who is Lord of both and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercion.
The Second Great Awakening, which generated new revivalist denominations resenting state establishments, further ensured the death of state religious establishments. Methodists did not want to subsidize Calvinists, and Baptists did not want to subsidize infant baptisms. Few wanted a state, local, or federal government to define Christianity. The Constitution does not mention God, except in the “year of our Lord” dating, not because its framers were indifferent to God but because they did not legislatively want to define God. They mostly agreed with Jefferson, an Anglican who was privately Unitarian, that it does not injure him if his neighbor believes in twenty gods or one god. They also mostly agreed with John Adams, who was Congregationalist and privately Unitarian, that, the constitution was made only for a moral and religious people and is inadequate to the government of any other. Adams declined in his 1798 address to the Massachusetts Militia to define what that religion should be.
In this spirit, Alexis de Tocqueville famously thought Christianity “should be considered the first” of America’s “political institutions” and that Americans must “maintain Christianity…at all cost.” However, he also noted that Americans, descending from ancestors who had “escaped the authority of the pope, did not submit to any religious supremacy.” So, their religion and habits were “democratic and republican.” Tocqueville warned against any establishment of religion, which would politicize and discredit it. He thought “the only efficacious means governments can use to put the dogma of the immortality of the soul in honor is to act every day as if they themselves believed it” and that “it is only in conforming scrupulously to religious morality in great affairs that they can flatter themselves they are teaching citizens to know it, love it, and respect it in small ones.” For Tocqueville, religion (and specifically Christianity) best endures in society not through state policy but by public persons, no less than private persons, living up to its broad moral precepts, including decency, honor, compassion, self-denial, and humanity. Perhaps here is a theme for the well-wishers of Christianity in American public life: higher moral standards in public life. Such moral standards may preclude the hardball politics that some advocates of “public Christianity” advocate.
Second, the unique relationship of church and country has led to positive results for both church and country.
For two centuries, religion in America has not rested on state power. Its vitality, and its failures, are its own doing. Any revival of Christianity in America, or anywhere, depends on persons and communities, apart from government, seeking God through faith, prayer, and a thirst for holiness, with acts of mercy and love. As a secular society, religious people brought reform in slavery, the rights of women, the spread of alcohol abuse, prison reform, peace movements, and civil rights. Secularity will look upon such faith commitments as a lifestyle choice, even while adherents will look upon their commitments as ultimate.
The United States is unique in that it has persisted in its religious life, decency, and confidence in the West at a time when the hold of each has declined in Europe. The reason has several facets. America remains the superpower in the world, and therefore continues to have confidence. Further, the spread of denominations and the respect for pluralism has contributed to this uniqueness.[3] In other words, the historical setting of the United States led to the federal government having no established faith tradition. At the time, several of the states had established a faith tradition, and a compromise arose that the federal government would not decide upon one among them. This meant that the federal government would not decide which denomination would be supreme. Faith traditions would be separate from the state. This amounted to releasing faith traditions to “compete” with each other without interference from the federal government. It meant that they had to keep up with the changing times and technology to reach new people. It meant the vitalization of the faith communities, as well as the death of some that no longer addressed the needs of the people. Separating faith communities from government interference is a good example of what happens when those in political power allow market forces to work. The leadership of faith communities, rather than paying attention to their standing with political leaders, addressed the needs of their people and their communities. Here is the key to why America has vital faith communities while Europe has long had the experience of dying, state-supported faith communities. It would be another story to tell if we applied this notion of separation to the economic community. The same principle, if applied, would lead to economic vitality.
This form of secular humanism has led to the removal of the content of ultimate commitments contained in faith traditions from the dictates of politicians and government agencies. This political fact strengthens all faith communities in their primary role of aiding their adherents to consider these matters freely and apart from coercion. When political power allows market forces to work in faith communities, it frees leadership of faith communities to focus upon the needs of their people and communities rather than their standing with politicians. It has led to a culture that respects the value of the individual. That respect includes providing cultural norms and institutional settings in which people can discover their passions and gifts. It invites and encourages people to become responsible agents of their lives, combatting a tendency toward sloth. It encourages discovery of vocation and avocation in life. They can discover the unique settings in which they can be leaders in their sphere of influence. Parents train children, in part, to be agents of their lives by helping them to become responsible for themselves by leaving home. Teachers fulfill their role when they equip students to be responsible and contributing members of society. In such ways, this civilization seeks the improvement of the everyday life of its citizens. Western civilization encourages the expansion of liberty. It promotes the improvement of a human life through science. It encourages respect for difference, tolerance, and diversity among its members through its embrace of dialogue and vigorous debate. The humility of expecting to learn from those with whom one disagrees is an important virtue in this culture.
The churches proclaim and demonstrate the gospel to all, embracing the mandate to have an exceptional care for those in need. Since local churches are part of a global community of churches, it is diverse, embracing every race, nation, class, and political viewpoint. The churches by their existence testify to the limits of the national and ideological loyalties the divide humanity. Their allegiance to Christ is a check upon the pretensions of the modern political state. Secular claims to sovereignty are within the churches secondary to its allegiance to Christ. Such a commitment leads the churches to participate in other communities in the culture with the prayerful hope of being leaven, salt, and light (Matt 5:13-16, 13:33) within civil society. This prayerful hope has its root in the eternal and transcendent, leading to participation without either despair or delusion. Such participation will not establish the rule of God on earth, for the fulfillment of the meaning of history, which lays beyond its suffering, is the promised rule of God that will come as a gift.
There are significant disagreements about the most appropriate and effective ways to advance freedom, justice, and peace in the world. In making political decisions, we are all subject to error. Through prayerful consideration and discernment, we courageously decide amid the uncertainties and ambiguities of communal life. We strive to credit the intelligence and good intentions of those who decide differently. Especially within the believing community we must, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, avoid portraying our conflicts as a war between “the children of light and the children of darkness.” Our unity in Christ is greater than whatever may divide us.
An open church welcomes dissent on contingent judgments about the right-ordering of society; this strengthens the search for truth and helps correct error.
Third, the churches and liberal democracy unite against totalitarianism.
The most urgent truth to be told about secular politics has been the threat of totalitarianism. Such political and ideological idolatry involves the state declaring itself to be absolute, and accountable only to its own norms of judgment. The 1934 Barmen Declaration will long be remembered as a courageous affirmation of the integrity of the Church in a totalitarian society. “We repudiate the false teaching that the Church can turn over the form of her message and ordinances at will or according to some dominant ideological and political convictions…. We repudiate the false teaching that the state can and should expand beyond its special responsibility to become the single and total order of life and thereby fulfill the commission of the Church.” Totalitarianism has taken a form from the political Left, the Soviet Gulag with the Cold War, and the political Right, fascism. The 20th century had a bloody face because of these ideologies. Both were revolutionary movements that denied what liberal democracy understands as freedom. Such ideologies resulted in a worldview and a system of social control utterly incompatible with a Christian and humanistic understanding of the human person, human community, human history, and human destiny. However, Islamic militancy has arisen with a different form of totalitarianism rooted in Islamic history and its intersection with fascism in the 20th century.
The churches fulfill their mission when they act on behalf of human beings who must live in various degrees of oppression. Whether under Communist regimes, local tyrants, or any Islamic State, the churches have a responsibility to act on behalf of those who struggle for their freedom. The churches must act on behalf of fellow Christians when the government treats them as inferior citizens.
A religion will tolerate, therefore, various political approaches to governance precisely because it refuses to turn a finite interpretation of reality into the infinite.[4] At its best, religion in our secular historical setting is not a political ideology. Out of regard for their unique role in directing people to ultimate concern, to all-embracing reality, and to infinite disclosure, they affirm the relativity of all political agendas. They must refuse commitment to an ideology.[5]
Fourth, the rise of a secular way of thinking and the challenge it presents to the continued existence of the churches. The form of secularity at the founding of the country was the separation of the churches from establishment of the religion by the political authorities. Another form of secularity has arisen.
Secularity since World War II refers to a vivid loss of a sensibility of that sacred presence in which we live, move, and have our being, but also of a sacred order by which we ought to live. Such right living by individuals and by nations has taken a back seat to the noisiest pronouncements of the public square. No one wants to restore the sacralization of the past or restore theocratic tyranny. In fact, religious movements need to recognize the immense value of the enlightenment by which humanitarian instincts led its leaders to see the sacralization of the past as an agent of the inhumane. In that sense, religions need to secularize. Yet, to be human is to have some sense of the transcendent, even if we limit transcendence to the paradox that lies between the infinitude of human aspiration and the brackets of our finitude: birth and death.
Secularity and religion have a difficult conversation because for many persons the divine has a blank face.[6] It seems as if any talk of the divine is another way to talk about ourselves. We could not verify any speaking from the divine realm anyway. Yet, the danger of the loss of religion for secularity is a culture full of people who have no ability express meaning and significance of their lives. The further we get from science and math, the more skeptical we become. We focus on the useful. Yet, has the secular and scientific culture abandoned the question of metaphysics too quickly? Granted, the history of metaphysical speculation looks like a waste of time. It looks as if any discussion of the divine will refer to nothing. The difference between the assumptions of the ancient world and the assumptions of a secular, scientific, democratic, and pluralistic world are vast. In fact, any attempt by religion to remain viable in this historical setting needs to recognize this problem. (I am agreeing with the projects of Bultmann, Moltmann, and Pannenberg and disagreeing with Barth). Our historical setting requires criticism of myth, for example.[7] A religion today that requires the sacrifice of the intellect on the part of adherents is not facing the challenge of this historical moment. It must re-think the mythical world picture, recognizing that human beings have the same drive for meaning in every age. To fail to take this step is to open the door for adherents to split their lives between the faith one affirms in the community and the life one lives.[8] Myth still communicates important reflections on beginning and end as well as good and evil. Modern myths like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings show the continuing power of such themes. Yet, we treat them as myths. We know they are not real. Myth can still challenge and communicate meaning. The symbols of myth, like those of poetry, give rise to thought and insight that remain valuable. In fact, such symbols may be truer in their communicating of meaning and significance and in gaining wisdom for well-lived human life than are many of the truths of science.[9]
Modern life opens the possibility of a purely secular experience of the world. The secular setting of the North Atlantic can take the form of devaluing faith commitments and the cumulative tradition because they think it is inseparable from mindless or unreflective external conformity. It contributes to the desacralization or disenchantment of the world. Such a world has no interruption. Rather, the continuous experience of space and time is central to the secular experience.
The basic issues of human beings are still present in a secular culture. Most human beings will not be content with the meaninglessness of human history. The secular person may well experience his or her own terror in the face of a history that is full of suffering and evil that has no meaning or purpose.[10] They will want to believe that the slaughter-bench of human history and its sacrifices have a purpose (Hegel). They still find many sources of wonderment and amazement, from the birth of a child to the beauty and vastness of the universe (Aristotle, Kant). Suffering and death still give them pause to consider the meaning of their lives and at times larger issues related to why human beings are here (existentialism). Human beings have enquiring minds, even if our minds may cause us to stretch beyond our capacity (Kant).
Secularity applies to processes inside the mind. Persons who live with their faith traditions within the blending encouraged by modernity can feel on the defensive. What they hold dear can seem implausible to their neighbors. In that sense, within the world created by modernity, all faith traditions seem implausible. It creates a crisis of credibility. Faith traditions become a colony within the larger culture created by modernity. Such a situation can generate uncertainty among individual adherents and the felt need among faith traditions to adjust to the new cultural reality. It becomes a matter of faith traditions accommodating themselves to a form of religious free enterprise. A faith tradition can refuse to accommodate the pluralistic situation of modern life and profess old images of the social order as if nothing has happened. It can engage in massive resistance to pluralism. The fundamental problem for faith traditions is how to keep going in a cultural setting that no longer takes for granted their definitions of reality.[11] My point here is that faith traditions are on the margins of the present cultural battle. Faith traditions had a place at the table of reasonable discourse. For some on the political Left, that place is increasingly denied. The lack of genuine evil in the Other creates the need to create imaginary evil in the Other. For such persons, evangelical Christians become an evil one needs to fear or oppose. A reasonable political conservative must become evil in the mind of some on the political Left. [12]
The natural order becomes our home from which we do not seek to rise above or transcend. We belong to this world. We have a sense of wonder that being like us have arisen from this natural order. At some level, science recognizes the ontological shock (big bang) that something exists rather than nothing, and a further ontological shock that beings with mind and therefore a sense of purpose have arisen out of random movement of atoms and cells. The existence of mind can give us a sense of power and control in the way we can objectify nature and culture. The success of science gives us even more confidence that the instrumental use of reason will solve mysteries. In the process, the modern pattern of thinking can view the transcendent as a threat, a dangerous temptation, or an obstacle to the highest good of the natural order. It can also have some openness to the transcendent as answering our deepest craving, need, and fulfillment of the good. The closing or opening of the modern mind to the transcendent is a powerful example of world picture becoming so much part of the background thinking that it feels natural and self-evident (Wittgenstein). It will take a leap of faith to move either toward a closed or open frame of mind toward the transcendent. Such a picture is so powerful that it prevents one from seeing important aspects of reality. The closed form of modernity can often lead to a loss of meaning and purpose. For example, science has the force of naturalism and materialism that closes itself from the transcendent. For some persons, that is enough. Thomas Hardy authored the poem, “God’s Funeral,” with this perspective in mind. Science has laid bare the godlessness of the universe and therefore the godlessness of our lives. Once one takes the leap of faith into this frame of mind and behaving, one can see overwhelming reasons for living in a science-driven story. It seems convincing that we are nothing but a fleeting life-form on a dying star, the universe is nothing but decaying matter under increasing entropy, and the finality of death. The ethical outlook is as compelling as the scientific one and a unique feature of this moment in human history. Political and moral life focuses on human ends such as human welfare, human rights, human flourishing, and equality between human beings. What we are left with is human good, and that is the concern of modern societies. Combining the scientific and ethical outlook of the closed form of the immanent way of thinking and living involves some form of the view that religion is dispensable to the human project. Religion may have helped humanity at a certain time in its childhood or adolescence, but now that we are adults, we can put away childish things like religion. An important aspect of this coming to adulthood of humanity is the formation of values and ethics based upon perceived mutual benefit. Modern culture has raised humanity to the point of being capable of self-authorization. Such self-authorization takes place over against a universe that is silent and indifferent, defeating all attempts to find some meaning in it. Ethical choices become absurd for that reason (Camus, Derrida, and a form of humanism that runs deep in the West). Nietzsche viewed the absurdity of the humanistic choice for universal benefit, egalitarianism, and democracy, as obstacles on the road to self-overcoming. Nietzsche offered a sense of exhilaration and a hymn of praise to the loss of meaning and the godlessness of the universe. In the maturity of humanity created by modernity, self-authorization has become axiomatic. The immanent framework that closes itself off from the transcendent is equally self-evident. Religion should simply disappear, as it does in the science fiction series Star Trek. Yet, the sense of loss is one may be able to sweep away or swallow up in the exhilaration of emancipation from the transcendent. For how long will one not feel a sense of loss? Humanity may never be able to still it completely. Yet, even for the person for whom the immanent frame of mind and life remains open to the transcendent, any confidence one has is only anticipatory. It will always involve a conversion to it, a leap of faith.
Such an immanent view that presumes the matter of transcendence is closed assumes the future is moving toward the overcoming of religion.[13] Granted, earlier forms of religious life are unstainable within a modern, secular, immanent way of life and thinking. Yet, new forms of religious life have arisen. Such re-composition of religious life and belief is continuing. The result is the further fragmentation of religious communities. People are changing their views of religious life during their lives in a way not occurring before. Yet, the close way of approaching immanence has issues as well. Our atoms and cells do not simply follow a pre-determined course. We have higher ethical and spiritual motives. Our ethical drive toward the universal, breaking out of parochial concerns toward something greater, is an experience of liberation and exaltation for many. Such an aspiration for wholeness seems like something for which the purely sociobiological account of human life does not address well. Even the aesthetic experience opens us to deeper meaning and significance. The fact that beauty moves us, whether in poetry, music, or art, remains powerful for religious and nonreligious alike. In fact, for the nonreligious, the novel, the poem, the music, become increasingly significant to their lives. Such awareness of the inadequacy of the closed approach to immanence leads many people to hesitate in their attitudes toward religion. As thinkers, we cannot escape some version of a notion of the fullness of a human life, the notion of human flourishing, in which a human life looks good, whole, proper, and lived as it ought to be. Even in a modern and secular setting, which seeks to alleviate human suffering as much as possible, scapegoating violence returns and we still have the rise of fascination with sexual vice. A closed, immanent system of thought and life will have its own version of utopianism that can lead to increased totalitarianism and violence.
Secular culture presents participants in that culture with the realistic option of atheism. It operates with the presumption of atheism. It adopts the principle of Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is best. We can explain what happens in this world without reference to the transcendent. Any discussion of the divine quickly becomes incoherent. The reality-reference of our talk of the divine is hardly obvious to everyone.[14]In such an historical moment, the internal problem religions face is that they arose at a historical moment that operated within a mythical view of the world.
Other challenges from this culture to the churches exist as well. Many persons and groups thoroughly ground themselves in this earth and see no need to believe anything transcends it. The theory of evolution reveals the depth of suffering written into natural processes, raising in a deeper way the perennial question of God, suffering, and evil. It offends reason to accept supposed traditional authority in contrast to our science and experience. The goal of self-fulfillment is at odds with the message of self-denial we find in the discipleship message of the churches. Self-fulfillment through many means of sexual expression is a particularly pressing challenge to churches that hold to the notion that the Christian ideal is either celibacy or marriage between a man and a woman. Expecting people in this setting to deny what they view as their natural sexual desires in favor of a transcendent moral claim is a tall order. If local communities or tribes are the basis of all knowledge, it will be increasingly difficult for the churches to affirm the universality of their transcendent claims. The result is decline in respect for the ethics of the churches.
Human beings want to know. The word of caution here is that the point of such a disclosure is not an elevated human experience, but rather, a disclosure of the divine and the disposition of the divine toward humanity. Such frontier or limit situations of suffering and death may provide a hint of transcendence. Yet, human beings are tough. The search for transcendence may be nothing more than a quest for self. Further, a demon may lurk there in the frontier of human experience. We need to exercise care in ascribing too much to such disclosure experiences.[15] Yet, such disclosures can reveal our participation in and encounter with wholeness.[16] It suggests a contemplative approach to reality in which we have an immediate awareness of the Infinite and Eternal. This devotion would perceive the presence of the Infinite and Eternal in all things, and of all things in the Infinite and Eternal. Religion in this sense does not arise from the desire to know. Religion arises from a desire to connect the part to the whole, the finite to the Infinite, the temporal to the Eternal. Religion arises from a desire for meaning and wholeness.[17] Religion arises out of the encounter between the finite and temporal, with the Infinite and Eternal, as divine.[18]
Fifth, the dialectic of the secular and the sacred is important for a secular culture.
We live at a time when, in many places, churches are not prospering, and many who value religion may find themselves pessimistic about its future. Is the crop going to fail? Secularity, the withdrawal individuals from God and from religious communities, has become a powerful way of experiencing the world. It may well be that churches are going through a kind of winnowing. America has had the luxury of having cultural Christians. In a sense, they are Christians in name only because the culture encouraged connections to Christianity. This cultural setting has led to congregational Christians, who are similar, but take the step of connecting to an actual congregation that they attend and support occasionally. Convictional Christians are those who seek to live their faith. They have met the risen Lord, who has changed them, and they seek to live their lives in relationship with him. Many polls suggest that the category of “nones” is growing in America, but this describes a defection from those who are cultural or congregational Christians. They feel less societal pressure to call themselves something they never truly were in the first place.[19] If this analysis is true, it has large implications for the ministries of the churches in the American missional setting.
A narrative or worldview of the West that includes recognition of flaws and reform toward a good society is one that invites meaningful participation. If we engage each other in real conversation, we can have some peace in knowing that our culture and institutions have the capacity to change peacefully toward an increasingly healthy, beautiful, good, just, and true system. In that sense, any pessimistic conclusion of the demise of the West is premature. I admit, however, that it requires some confidence that those who participate in the institutional life of the West will see the benefits personally and corporately of their participation.
The notion of the people of God suggests pilgrimage. They are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth, having no continuing city, but we seek one to come (Hebrews 11:13-16). It suggests we cannot keep anything, and we cannot stay fixed on anything. If we are to be witnesses of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, we must not conform to the culture in which we live. We become a people shaped by the priority they give to the Word of God in their lives. We can assume the culture has signs of the rule of God. We can also assume it has powers that are totalitarian in nature and seek to place them in bondage. If they set down roots, they can become prisoners to the culture. Yet, the world is also the place where we have roots. If we think of the Jeremiah 29 and the people of God in exile, we need to take his advice to heart. The people of God need to seek the welfare of the place in which we live. They bloom where God has planted them. Of course, both images are part of the paradoxical situation in which the people of God live in their historical moment.[20]
If we think of the dialectic within modernity as a description of an imperfect but good, a real rather than utopian understanding of society, then the church can fulfill its vocation within modernity. It may do so in ways that surprise, annoy, and provoke the culture, but it will still be operating within a culture that the church believes needs the salt and light it can provide. Christianity seeks to live from something and exist for something that reaches beyond itself. It moves toward a future defined as the rule of God. The church is oriented toward the future of its Lord and lives in expectation and hope of its coming Lord. Its life and suffering, its work and action in the world and upon world, is determined by its hopes for the world. It serves humanity by being a community that witnesses in its life and word to what humanity is promised to be by God.[21] Its calling is irrevocable, but how the calling to exhibit faith, hope, and love changes.
If the narrative of modernity is the tension represented by the objectification contained in technological society and the enchanted world of subjectivity on the other, such a situation is not perfect or utopia, but it may be the best for which we can hope. The mission and ministry of the church will find itself within the tension of the dialectic. If it places itself outside the dialectic, it will become increasingly irrelevant and even dangerous to the freedoms and economic vitality to which many have become accustomed. Within the dialectic of modernity, rather than accept one of the roles modernity tends to assign it, it may well pursue a role modernity would find disturbing.
Although I could direct attention to other areas of concern, I will focus upon the misuses of freedom in this culture. Such misuse is an internal threat to western civilization. The churches can provide that authentic community where members of the culture can sort through the blessing and danger of freedom. They can help people uncover the limitations of the specialization of society, bringing them into intentional contact with considerations of the wholeness of individual and corporate life. The spiritual danger is trying to extract infinite value and meaning from a finite activity like work. Churches can help people see the shortcomings of other forms of group life, especially of those that have economic and political orientation, neither of which can satisfy their desire for meaning and wholeness. As such, the churches, even as they point to a transcendent event, can be important places that aid in human flourishing. Thus, the pluralism, complexity, and ambiguity we find in western civilization opens the door for the possibility of new forms of thought and life. The churches can find a new place in culture as they address matters of wholeness and meaning. The role of imagination finds a new place. We can begin to see the human predicament as the adventure of a lifetime of redefining self. This age can appreciate, in ways in which the recent past could not, the multidimensional nature of reality, the many-sidedness of the human spirit, and the multivalent nature of human knowledge and experience. Thus, even as our post-modern age weakens its confidence in the institutions and values of western civilization, it could permit the emergence of entirely new prospects of reintegrating our freedom with moral considerations involving human flourishing.[22]
Much of what I am suggesting has its roots in some anthropological considerations. Human beings cannot escape the question of the kind of life worth living. Even this age has its unquiet frontier. The disquiet of death still faces the person of this culture. In America in particular, the belief remains for many that their sense of something higher at which to aim, something better and moral, has a profound connection to God. Such questions help us to realize that as fragmented as our lives appear, we strive for a narrative understanding of our lives. Orienting our lives toward fullness, discerning the pattern or meaning of our lives, is a journey or quest out of which the narrative of our lives arise. Epistemology is not primary. Rather, testimony regarding what it is like to live within a certain framework or pattern of life becomes primary. Such an approach focuses upon the story.[23]
Thus, we can see that while the institutions of western civilization are under challenge, these institutions have an underlying unity. They have a common source and aim. They seek human flourishing through providing opportunities to reflect upon meaning and creativity through a respectful balance of independence and community. They provide cultural norms that encourage participants to become responsible agents of their lives. They can become leaders in their sphere of influence. By contrast, in any tyrannical system that encourages dependence upon the leader or a small group of leaders, such independence and leadership among the people is a danger.
Yet, we live in a time when the institutions of society present themselves in the public square in an increasingly broken form. Families, education, businesses, media, entertainment, and political life all reveal their broken character through the discourse about them in the public square. My concern here is the churches. The formation of congregations and the formation of western civilization share a common source and aim in human flourishing. Thus, we can understand the churches only in relationship to the culture in which they exist. The churches are a specialized form of group life occurring within the larger group of culture. They exist alongside other specialized groups. Each of these specialized groups have important roles to play in the forming of citizens who are responsible, thinking, reasonable, and moral people who are ready to be responsible agents of their lives. The churches do not heighten their significance by denigrating the other institutions of culture. In fact, the very concept of Christian communities presupposes the presence of the larger community that we call culture or the nation. Further, the presence of the churches as social institutions are a constant reminder to other institutions, especially political life, that the present arrangements of society are not the “end” in any meaningful way. The churches can stir the imagination of concerned citizens for social action that moves humanity nearer to its fullest potential. In that sense, the churches counter the trend of fragmentation through specialization by directing our attention to wholeness. Their invitation to such considerations enables churches to be part of the general human flourishing at which all institutions aim and be part of the healing that needs to occur as people inevitably misuse freedom. The churches will need a prayerful, discerning, and realistic relationship with the culture on which they depend and in which they participate. They will need to have a certain degree of reasonableness, rationality, and detachment, to discern the times to which God is calling the people of God to practice its vocation.
Of course, I am assuming that western civilization is a cultural partner with whom the churches may fruitfully engage in dialogue. In fact, I am assuming that the churches have already learned much from the dialogue and will continue to learn. Such a humble approach by the churches will aid its witness, even as they share what they believe to be transcendent truth. I also clearly believe the culture has much to learn from the wisdom of the ages contained in the traditions of the churches. The ambiguous quality of life opens the door for a discussion of the spiritual quality of individual and corporate life. Western civilization is already a spiritual community as its institutions invite consideration of the meaning and purpose of individual and national life. The churches can open the door for people to experience the healing power of such considerations. Life has an ambiguous quality for all of us. Providing individual members the opportunity to reflect upon the ambiguities of life has a healing power. Thus, when the churches speak of ultimate commitments, they are not trying to engage the people of this culture in a dialogue completely alien to them. One way to look upon the mission of the church is to point the people of this culture to Christ as the fulfillment of their desire for meaning, creativity, and wholeness. In short, their immanent desire for human flourishing will find its completion in a life that embraces the revelation of the transcendent claim of God in Christ.
Sixth, secularity as a way of thinking about and living in the world challenges the message and identity of the churches.
I am raising the issue of the relevance of the message and life of the church to the challenges of this moment of its history. A church that cannot change to embrace a life and witness to changed circumstances becomes ossified and dies. One can easily grant that various forms of fundamentalism and dogmatism has a way of freezing Christian life and thought with some idealized image of the past. It is not as easy to see how the current progressive and political theologies, wedded as they are to a certain ideological tribe within modernity, have bid farewell to the church of its ancestors. One makes political commitments, has religious experiences, and is adopts a critical theory approach to history and social groups, apart from being Christian. To emphasize any of them as if they are the answer to the mission of the church for today is to be blinded by the current issues of church and culture. Solidarity with others in meaningful actions loses its creative character if one no longer wishes to be anything different from the others. Christianity becomes nothing more than an adoption of a new brand of politics. It runs the risk of forgetting that the church has its identity to the man from Nazareth who was crucified. To put it in terms the person sympathetic to the Left can readily understand, even if the classless society envisioned by the revolution were to become reality, Christians would still be alien and homeless. The church can work through its crisis of identity within modernity only in contact with the others with whom it seeks to minister. In the process, the church is always seeking its home.[24]
To raise the issue of the crisis of identity for the church is to open one to a fearful and defensive expression of faith that can become rigid. It can interpret Christian life legalistically and protect the doctrines of the church because it no longer they are sufficiently powerful to maintain themselves. In becoming vigilant guardians of the faith, they may well do violence to faith. The tendency to withdraw to the margins of society and view it as a sign of faithfulness, as one might find in certain forms of fundamentalism and progressivism, run the risk of sectarian withdrawal and irrelevance. Yet, other forms of evangelicalism and progressivism run the risk of losing identity by passive assimilation. Some churches will resort to timid faith and superstition, which has a parallel in the decline into unbelief. What this tension shows is that the sectarian mentality and the assimilation mentality are equally signs of ego-weakness. To adopt the Hegelian approach here, the church will find it identity in a dialectical relation with the other. However, it must work out this identity in the same way the New Testament did as it reflected upon the work of God revealed in the cross of the man from Nazareth.[25]
If we think of the church as connected to the preaching of Jesus concerning the rule of God, then the message of the church has a universalist thrust. Church and world are inseparable. The churches are true to their vocation when they anticipate and represent the destiny of humanity and the goal of history. Thus, if we narrow the concerns of the church only to opposition to the culture of the West, we deprive the churches of their transformative significance. The risk is that religion becomes a concern for increasingly small numbers of people. It may be little more than “a hangover from another historical period.” If the church is to respond to this challenge, it will need a new emphasis upon its vocation as an eschatological community “pioneering the future of all humanity.” Emphasizing the coming rule of God makes the church move beyond itself and its narrow concerns to the unity of humanity toward which the rule of God is moving. Significantly, this unity is not one that anyone can coerce. One cannot enforce it by violence. Such a forced unity would not testify to the Creator of humanity, who has made room for finite humanity alongside the Infinite and Eternal God. A rule by violence or coercion means that the subjects are by nature opposed to the divine rule. Such a unity would contain the seeds of its own destruction. The only unity consistent with the rule of God is one based on justice and caring for each other. The church is itself preliminary to the reign of God, in which, as the conclusion of Revelation makes plain, there will be no “temple” and no “church” as we understand it. Yet, this preliminary, provisional activity of the church on the way to the reign of God remains relevant to its role in this time and place.[26]
Seventh, I conclude with some hope for the churches and for the secular culture.
To conclude such reflections upon church and culture, I offer the following hope for the churches and for the culture. Christians and congregations can make a soft difference in the political world. I do not mean weak. I do mean they need the courage to live their basic goodness in a political environment that encourages turning the Other into the embodiment of the evil (Hitler) enemy. Christians need to order their world differently from that of the cultural, economic, and political order. Threats and coercion are not the proper tools of Christians. The point is not that Christians are better than the world or that the world is under judgment and Christians live as redeemed. The world and the church are both fallen and redeemed. Knowing their redemption is through Christ, Christians and congregations seek to live their lives in the light of such knowledge. The question then becomes whether the people of God are vibrant, engaging, and enticing in their witness in the world. If the people of God are walking in the world of politics, they are walking in particularly dangerous territory. Repeatedly, the political world has co-opted the Christian faith for its ungodly purposes. Yet, even here, the people of God need to show their courage wisely, with goodness and wisdom.[27]
The mission of the people of God includes and transcends the mission of the political state. Even while the state fights against disorder, the Christian does not view the other as the enemy. The resistance to evil consists in never allowing evil to overcome the Christian. Resistance to evil includes seeking the path of fellowship with the enemy. The people of God have a duty to recognize political authority and share in in the execution of this authority where possible. If such power does not result in anarchy or tyranny, Christians adapt to it. God has ordained the legitimate exercise of authority in human affairs. The legitimate exercise of authority is the secret way God has chosen to limit the fullest expression of human desire. The willingness of God to do this reflects divine patience, giving humanity time to recognize divine grace. Given its reliance upon the sword, compulsion, and fear, it will be difficult to such a graceless order as part of the rule of grace. Yet, the people of God can recognize the grace behind the gracelessness of the state, adapting to temporal order. The state provides the external conditions required for the people of God to continue their witness. In fact, as the Book of Revelation teaches, the primary expression of illegitimate authority is its persecution of the people of God. Legitimate authority is a provisional representation of the future rule of God. The people of God have no need to be hostile toward the state. Such hostility would be a sign that they became impatient even while God remains patient. Such hostility fails to recognize the patience God must show toward the people of God themselves. Where possible, part of the reasonable service Christians render in the world is their involvement in the political order. They participate in the provisional, graceless form of the political order, which expresses the gracious will of God. They recognize the call of God in being citizens of the state. They recognize citizenship as one expression of their service to God. They do so, knowing political authority better than it knows itself. They know the beastly potential of the state. They can do this precisely because their true citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). The characteristic of the Christian life has its political dimension. Christian love expresses itself in concern for its non-Christian context. Such love calls Christians to participate in the state. Such participation is a provisional anticipation of the future fellowship of the people of God and world that will exist in the future fullness of the rule of God.[28] Thus, the political order in relation to the kingdom of God has the task of achieving an order of justice and peace in social life. The broken relation of political government to the future of the kingdom of God in the function of ensuring justice and peace is the basis of the injunction that Christians must subject themselves to the political authorities, even though the authority be that of a pagan empire.[29]
The only serious political question is how free human beings can live in society in a way that institutionalize freedom. Christians have no option but to participate in the political and economic order. The only question is how they do so. The sprawling activities of the State throughout society impinges upon our lives in a way that makes everything political.
Christian revelation does not touch upon key political directions. Finding theological justification for the political ideology one adopts is the worst thing a Christian can do.
Thus, belief in progress, reason, productivity, and happiness are not more Christian than patriotic notions of country, hierarchy, honor, and order.
The trust of all forms of the political Left in the effectiveness of government in solving problems is not more valid than distrust in government the political Right.
The optimism the political Left has regarding re-molding human nature is not more valid than pessimism the political Right regarding human nature.
The belief that the political Left has in the beneficial qualities of its government policies for the poor is not more valid theologically than the political Right has in the beneficial results of a growing economy and keeping help for the poor local. Further, many of the poor tend to vote on the conservative side.
Belief that American sins make it no different from other countries is not more theologically valid than believing in the exceptional quality of America.
What is important is for the Christian to bear witness to Jesus Christ on the political scene. The church needs to have a witness from within all political movements that seek to institutionalize freedom. This fact will be a startling witness to Christians valuing freedom. If they can do this, they can have friendship that crosses political lines. They embody the goal of God being in Christ, reconciling the world, even amid vigorous political difference. They can act as mediators. They can lessen hostility. They reduce conflict between economic classes. If the primary focus is their fellowship with Christ, then they must set aside absolute loyalty to the political party to which they belong. They become genuine witnesses to the reconciling covenant of God with humanity in Jesus Christ. They cannot serve two masters. Such distance from the political party would be the miracle of genuine Christian freedom. The Christian has the task of mediation and reconciliation. Such an approach involves the relativization of political ideology. It requires humility and soberness rather than passion. Absolutizing political ideology inevitably leads to treating the opponent as an enemy. Relativizing political ideology makes honest competition possible. The first task, I am suggesting, is a Christian lifestyle in politics, rather than pretending to develop a Christian political ideology.[30]
Appeals to hatred and the tool of violence are off limits for the Christian. Such movements will not lead to freedom. Demonstrations for peace while carrying placards that express hatred of others is not a path Christians can endorse. Talk of peace combined with pillaring opponents is a scandal. It cannot diffuse hatred in a way that will lead to liberation. The means of hatred inspires a similar response from opponents. Some Christians seem to believe in the triumph of their cause by any means necessary. Use of violence is always contrary to the will of God. Non-Christians may well take such a path, but such a path is not valid for the Christian. Any victory achieved through hatred and violence will recoil on those who have achieved it. They will find themselves in the role of oppressor.[31]
To choose a different means from that of others engaged in the political process will seem ineffective. It will lead to refusing the path of increasing agitation. It will lead to political reflection rather than stirring up the masses. It will lead to detachment and comprehension. It will lead to judicious and profound information rather than bombarding people with masses of information. It will lead to interlacing work and leisure. Such means modify profoundly the social context. Christian freedom in the political sphere must serve as a critical instrument in relation to every movement of freedom. The problem with movements that have the declared object of freedom is that they also have a secret objective of a revolution. The distinction is critical and decisive for Christian involvement. To state it bluntly, there is no justice without reconciliation. If one seeks freedom for women through the means of hatred for men, one is not going down a path of Christian revolution. If one seeks the freedom of the have nots economically through hatred and violence of those who have, one is not pursuing a Christian path of revolution. To throw off the bonds of colonialism through hate and violence toward colonizers is not the path of justice. Christians must demythologize liberation movements in favor of the love and reconciliation already won in Christ.[32] The point here is that Christian revolution seeks a means to liberate both the oppressor and the oppressed.
All of this suggests that political authorities have the potential for openness to an I-Thou relation to the groups and individuals that interact within civil society. If it does not do so, it opens itself to the demonic, the I-It relation.[33] One sign of this advance among political authorities is respect for religious freedom. The best for which any religion can hope from the modern secular state is that the state places no hindrance in the way of practicing one’s faith and life. Theologically, the Christian affirms the freedom of God to act and work in and through any person and circumstances. Thus, silencing the confession of others is not a valid path for the Christian. Such matters are open to judgment from God but are not matters for us. As created in the image of God, God calls upon Christians to respect the conscience of others.[34]
As Christians participate in institutional life and join movements, one might hope they would see things others do not see and see problems others do not see. Such participation involves profaning the idols of the group in which one finds oneself and building bridges to the other. Institutions and movements are not sacred. An ideology is not a sacred thing. It needs genuine opposition from within. Yet, the tendency is that participants view ideology as sacred and that any opposition to it is evil. Christians must not join others in placing faith and hope in an institution or movement. Profaning the idol means that Christians remind their fellow participants that finite things do not merit such devotion. Christians can help fellow participants find liberation as they help them overcome their spiritual and intellectual alienation. Building bridges can happen as Christians build relationships with others with whom they differ. We live in a society increasingly partitioned and divided into class, profession, and political affiliation. We know each other across these lines increasingly less. Each segment of society has its language that alienates it from other segments. They can no longer speak authentically to each other. Christians are pilgrims and strangers in every culture, as I Peter reminds us. As such, Christianity can provide a place to restore bonds and encourage communication between people. In particular, of course, people who might normally be enemies and opponents in society can reconsider that relation. They become brothers and sisters in Christ as part of the people of God. As the “household rules” of the New Testament remind us, master and slave unite in their common belief in Christ and in the fellowship of the church. The same is true today, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, employer, and employee. Christians find their bond more in Christ than in their political or economic identity. The work of the new creation, in which one is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, is one in which all find their unity in Christ (Galatians 3:28). As Christians oppose idols (especially the idol of political ideology of Left and Right) and build bridges, they are fulfilling the hope that Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11). Such unity amid social forces that push people away from each other is a sign of the rule of God, in which the work of God is to restore unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ (Ephesians 1:10). Christians can become a sign that points to the truth that comes toward us from our future destiny in Christ. The truth advances from that future. The content of that future, bearing the form and face of Jesus Christ, illuminates our way.[35]
The churches can rightly side with movements that relieve human suffering and liberated human beings from the vicious cycle of bondage. For example, liberation in economic life involves support for economic freedom that respects the contribution that producers, workers, consumers, and investors are respected for their roles. It can recognize that placing government officials manage economic life will lead to a loss of vitality and creativity. In the political dimension of life, this will mean support for democratic institutions. In the cultural dimension, it will mean liberating people from the vicious circle of alienating activities in the public square and encouraging mutual recognition of the other. It can support liberation of the human relationship with nature. In liberation regarding the question of the meaning of life, we can appreciate our significant connection with the ever-widening circle of social relationships, beginning with the local community and extending to our distant connections with global humanity.[36]
I would like to think I have shown a way that one can bring love for the church and love for the country together. The mission of the church is consistent with such love. Our personal discipleship will find growth of the fruit of the Spirit and the practice of the virtues as viewed in the New Testament. Granted, Christians need to temper their investment in any institution, movement, or culture with the recognition of their provisional status. Yet, they have good reason to participate in these provisional institutions. God could hardly care for us without also caring for the institutions and cultures in which we find ourselves. Institutional life provides an enduring gift to the common good and therefore provides a proper arena for Christians to live out their vocation as Christians in them.
One can hope and pray that churches will find ways of cooperating and resisting secular culture. Such an approach will move society and individuals toward increasing health. Churches can recognize the danger of timidity and sloth as people often seek the path of least danger and resistance. Churches can work with the culture, embracing the building of responsible agents of their future among the groups and participants of this society. Such an approach will require discernment. The core ideals of the West, freedom, tolerance, human rights, and the constitutional state, arose in cooperation with the churches. The West has changed, with the help of the churches. Advances science has brought to the quality of everyday life, the importance of the consent from the governed, the abolition of slavery, removal of racism, elevating women, respecting a variety of sexual expressions, are just a few of the advances. The ability to look critically at itself and make changes is one of the signs of a healthy group. In that sense, Western Civilization shows signs of being a flawed and healthy group, much as you and I live with our flawed and healthy ways of personal and family life.
[1]
[2] https://lawliberty.org/a-national-conservative-faith/ provides the basis for the following.
[3]
[4] Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Volume VI, 43-45, 52-57.
[5] Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations Volume VI, p. 43-4, 52-57.
[6] Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York, 1978), 46.
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18]
[19] Stetzer, Ed. "The state of the church in America: Hint: It's not dying." Christianity Today, October 1, 2013. christianitytoday.com.
[20]
[21]
[22] Charles Taylor (A Secular Age, 2007)
[23] Charles Taylor (Sources of the Self, 1989, Part One)
[24]
[25]
[26] Pannenberg was anticipating the issues of post-modernity and the radical critique of the West (“Kingdom of God and the Church, 1957).
[27] Miroslave Volf, “Soft Difference.”
[28]
[29]
[30]
[31]
[32]
[33]
[34]
[35] Jacques Ellul (Christian Faith and Social Reality, 1960, though I take the insight in a different direction).
[36]
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