The Church as Champion of a New Vision

Earlier this week I wrote about the price the church has paid for continuing to walk hand-in-hand with the culture. In the world of Richard Land, the Southern Baptists' ethics czar, Christianity’s struggle with American culture shrinks down to one word: Sex. I’m not Richard Land. Which is not to say I’m untroubled by the crass sexuality our culture peddles, but that’s more a symptom that the root of America’s lost vision.

More at the heart of our confusion is our simultaneous practice of two religions so different that there’s really no room for them to co-exist. Jesus acknowledged this when he said “no man can serve two masters.” Many Christians choke on these passages in Matthew’s 7th chapter, especially when Jesus goes on to say, “You cannot serve both God and wealth, You’ll either hate one and love the other.“ Even to discuss these words risks whispers of “socialist!” and accusations of being un-American. But the point isn’t that we should all take a vow of poverty, or that having wealth is ungodly. Later in the same chapter Jesus says, “God knows you need these (material) things.” Christians who care enough to explore these “two masters” admonitions are often eager for a way to make serving God compatible with our acquisitive society. A first step might be to admit the essential difference between the universal laws of an infinite God and finite economic systems that are man-made and subject to human manipulation.

Princeton economist Paul Krugman wrote recently of how a religious belief “in the perfection of free markets” facilitated the sub-prime mortgage collapse that now threatens the entire economy. Krugman described federal regulators as “blinded by ideology,” noting then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s allegiance to the principles of Ayn Rand, the “high priestess of unfettered capitalism.” At the heart of their faith system is the belief that each individual’s pursuit their own self interest will inevitably benefit society in general. As Greenspan wrote in an article for Rand’s newsletter, “it is in the self-interest of every businessman to have a reputation for honest dealings and a quality product.”

That sounds logical, but apparently you can’t count on it working every time, like for instance God’s love and compassion. What would a free enterprise system based on God’s values look like? The answer is laid out in the books of Moses. It’s a society that balances the interests of the many, especially of the most vulnerable, with the self-interest of the powerful few. In fact it was for the exact purpose of establishing such a caring culture that God supplanted the Canaanite oligarchy with the covenant people of Israel. Jesus continued the fight by challenging the spirituality of religious leaders who prospered financially by throwing in with the Romans while their people suffered in poverty.

Our challenge as an American church is to champion a vision that puts God’s values first, a vision with clear priorities whenever we see God‘s intentions at odds with human self-interest. It will give us authenticity we have lost. No man can serve two masters.

An Apocalyptic Vision: Can a Remnant Prevail?

I wrote in a recent article on divorce among Christians that the church has lost membership since the sixties. The best studies show it’s true and anecdotal evidence from local congregations supports the studies: a smaller percentage of Americans are in church week to week. Some would say, yes, but the people still practicing the faith do so with greater fervor, which may be a worthy tradeoff. God has worked with remnants before.

Many remember a time when the church and the culture walked hand-in-hand. Guys named Ike and Jack were in the White House, Andy was taking care of business in Mayberry and that darn Beaver was always in trouble. Maybe we were deluding ourselves even then, thinking God and American culture shared the same values. But even if we weren’t, those days are gone.
This is not to say the culture hasn’t seen some progress on equal opportunity issues like racial equality, women’s rights, gay and lesbian visibility. It has. But progress has come because people were willing to take risks and stand in opposition to the status quo.

Many in the church, good middle class folk, still cling to a baby blanket belief in the American promise that almost everyone embraced after World War II. In fact, they’ll die still believing and therein lies the problem. Who’ll take their place in the pews? For younger generations the church has become irrelevant. It is not a natural fit with the culture, because it’s values are clearly not the same. And it hasn’t generally shown the courage to offer an alternative vision by standing against the wasteland of our modern material culture. It sits impotently in between, the Monarch of Nothingness, a shell of it’s former self and a shadow of what it might be.

If the church is going to prevail in the war for hearts and minds it first needs to realize it is at war -- which is not to say we should put on the angry xenophobic face of those who prosper from the death and destruction of bullets and bombs. As usual Jesus provides a good model. Jesus wore God’s heart on his sleeve, which infuriated the religious leaders who had traded control of their church for a life of luxury. They were willing to turn their backs on Roman oppression and the poverty of their own people as long as temple taxes were paid and their bellies were full.

But Jesus would have none of it and his answer was apocalypse: confrontation to end the current corrupt system, and the beginning of a new era where God’s values of justice, compassion and love would prevail. In other words, restoration of God’s intentions for creation and for human kind.

Right now the battle has been joined on a guerilla level. The church I’m attending has declared itself a “reconciling” congregation and opened its doors all shapes of people. And guess what, those once shunned in both the church and the larger culture are coming in and feeling at home. The Episcopal Church has taken a stand by ordaining homosexual clergy and has paid a price for doing the right thing. These are good starts but only skirmishes if the church is to embrace the kind of covenant responsibilities described in scripture. If the church wishes to inspire a new vision for a new era, it must offer something radically different than the selfish materialism that is the current religion of American culture. I’ll write more about that later this week.