Christianity for the Few, not for the Many?

Famed Christian historian and teacher Martin Marty appeared recently on a Chicago public television station to discuss his new book, The Christian World. The retired University of Chicago professor is distinctive for his balanced approach to the faith. He is both an unbiased scholar and a fervent believer.

In the book and interview Marty followed the same pattern, telling both sides. He touts how the Christianity grew in 2,000 years from a veritable handful of followers to become the world’s largest religion boasting over two billion adherents. But at the same time he discusses how membership in the faith is currently in decline.

If you want to know why Marty believes Christianity is shrinking, you’ll need to read the book. The question that fact opens in my mind is, should we be concerned?

In its early centuries Christianity was not only a minority practice, it was very much an outsider religion. Christians felt themselves differentiated by their faith from other members of their cultures. That all changed early in the fourth century when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome. From that point on Christianity began to integrate with the cultures in which it was practiced. In Paul’s New Testament times, Christians wondered how they could accommodate their secular lives -- such as membership in professional guilds -- to lives centered on their Christianity. After Constantine the question became how Christianity could accommodate itself to majority status. As a result Christians became much less “a peculiar people.”

So the church is shrinking. Should we be concerned? Or should we just smile and say, “so be it?” I’ve long puzzled over the so-called Great Commission passage: “Go ye therefore a teach all nations …” It seems at odds with Jesus’ attitude in “pre-Easter” gospel accounts in which he calls people to change essentially if they care to follow him. If they are unwilling to give up much, he lets them walk away without regret. Jesus in his wisdom seemed to know this is a faith for the few, not the many.

By contrast, the majority voices in American Christianity today carefully craft their message to isolate the powerful majority from their slings and arrows while picking off the weaker minorities. So we receive constant barrages from organizations like Dr. Dobson’s Focus on the Family against tiny minorities like the gay and lesbian community while messages like Jesus’ challenge to the rich young ruler to give up his many possessions seem to have been stripped from their Bibles.

In a recent issue of its online magazine Dr. Dobson’s group attacks Barack Obama for something he once said about marijuana use. Yet they have remained quiet or have tried to justify the devastation caused by our current war. On the smaller issues that won’t offend their constituencies, they cry out. But on the great issues of life and death, war and peace, economic injustice, compassion for oppressed minorities? Silence. Many true spiritual seekers who were born into Christian homes spot the shallow phoniness and want nothing to do with such a church.
What should it mean to be Christian? I’ll answer with Jesus’ own statement, made at the beginning of his ministry and recorded in Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.”