Unlike an iceberg rolling, cultural shifts can be subtle. Once we come face to face with them though, it’s easy to feel as if the entire world has turned upside down. At the same time, when the deep structures of our culture shift, we have an innate desire to get back to “normal”, whatever that is, even if it means denying the reality of that change.
We want to believe that “if we could only _____” then everything would go back to normal. Everything would be OK. There are several problems with that thinking of course, not least of which is that it was never OK in the first place. But suppose that it was, just exactly how do we get back “there”? How do we get the toothpaste back into the tube, the genie back into the lamp? Short answer? We can’t.
If step one is recognizing the deep structures of our culture (see Deep Structures), then step two is facing our reality. Both the previous and the current deep structures of any culture lead us to ask, “what is the place of the church in our culture.” For those of us in The United States, until quite recently the answer was “a central one.” No matter the region of the country, the denomination in question or the relative size of an individual congregation or even the beliefs and practices of individuals in any given place, the Church, broadly understood held a central role in civic life. It was seen as a force for good, for networking and social cohesion, a basis for morals and ethics. Broadly speaking, Christianity formed one half of what James Davidson Hunter calls the hybrid Enlightenment that created the American experiment. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French historian, diplomat and political philosopher, saw this in the early 19th Century in his visits to America and this held true well into the 20th Century. The only real argument about this is when it came to an end. But as Hunter said in part 2 of his interview with Apollos Watered, the deep structures of American Society have fundamentally changed. We live in a “Post-Enlightenment, Post-Liberal, and Post-Christian world.” That means that the church is, at best, marginalized.
Hunter convincingly makes the case that the new deep structures of our culture are profoundly nihilistic, both passively and actively. Culturally we have adopted structures that are fundamentally dehumanizing. We have relativized truth, reality, ethics and even our self-understanding. We have undermined human community and our need to belong. We have alienated ourselves from any universal human purpose. Is it any wonder that people seek out and try on new identities that make them stand out, or that even many who claim the name Christian do so as a tribal identity devoid of any real faith commitment or theological depth? The reality of these nihilistic structures affect the church as much as the wider culture, and the temptations to a Nietzschean approach to power are alive and well in us as much as anyone else.
When an individual, a group, or a movement that did have a position of influence and some degree of power, and that position it lost, we tend to get defensive, to seek means of maintaining any kind of influence we can. Hunter makes the strong statement that Christians have been marginalized from virtually every avenue of cultural influence, and so left and right, but especially right, we use it. For some this is simply the way it is and ought to be. Others ask, “what else are we supposed to do?” and so we at least court the coercive power of the government, after all we are only seeking what is right and true and good, aren’t we? The problem is, as Hunter notes, politics cannot do the work of the deep structures of culture. I would add, when it tries it ultimately fails. A backlash comes. We see it in the current political environment. We also see it in the view many have of the church.
For many, the church, especially the evangelical church, is not only no longer seen as a force for good, it is now likely seen as a force for evil. Hunter goes so far as to call it toxic and radioactive, believing that the term “evangelical” will be of no use theologically for 100 years. It is a bleak picture to say the least, and one that the stats seem to bear out, especially among the young.
Facing the reality of the church’s position, though, need not be a reason for despair. It is an opportunity for us to be what we are supposed to be, a living example of God’s Kingdom on earth now. This means we need to take stock of who we are and what we are about. If the first step for the church in turbulent times is to be like the men of Issachar when David took the throne, men “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32), then completing the second step of facing reality is taking stock of ourselves. It is one thing to see the corruption in the world around us, it can be quite another to name it among ourselves. But doing so is necessary for both being true to who we are and offering hope to a world that needs it so desperately.
The danger for us is not entirely obvious. We are influenced by the culture around us. How could we not be? Modern marketing guru Seth Godin has a shorthand definition of culture—people like us do things like this.” No matter where in the world you are from, you are like the people around you, at least to some degree. I remember having a poster in the late 70s or early 80s that showed a cartoon man rolled up in a ball. The caption was the J.B. Phillips version of Romans 12:2. “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould.” It is an important warning about the power of the culture around us to form us. But even here we must be careful. We will be (we are!) tempted to see the ways in which those we oppose have been coopted by culture and ignore the ways in which we ourselves have been. “They have compromised!” (And they have.) “That violates Scripture!” (It does.) But it is entirely possible to have our major points of doctrine correct, to “believe” in the authority of Scripture even when it says things at odds with our current culture and still miss the heart of Jesus.
If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-3, CSB)
Here is the heart of Hunter’s challenge to the contemporary church. Do we love one another? Are we motivated by and conformed to the image of Jesus or are we using his name as a tribal marker for “people like us”? Jesus doesn’t give us that option. He takes what we were and makes it into something new. Something that transcends tribe and class, ethnicity and gender. In Jesus people not like us become us. Together we become and do things that are like him. That poster I had as a kid wasn’t wrong, but it was incomplete and so had the problem that many conservative, Bible believing people like me have: it got (ironically) got the outer form right but missed the inner reality which is found in the second part of the verse:
but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity. (Rom. 12:2b, Phillips)
In Jesus, God changes us from the inside out. He forms us first. He gives us the ability to meet his demands (something we would do well to remember), he brings us to maturity, he proves that his plan, his way is a good way when ours are not. His is the way of reconciliation, and the pattern we are to follow.
From now on, then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. Even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know him in this way. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.” He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Cor. 5:16-21, CSB)
And here is where I have something of an issue with Hunter’s approach. Hunter reduces “politics” to “an administrative tool” and essentially says that Christianity in general and the Gospel specifically have nothing to do with politics. As someone who is fairly convinced that if a politician (any politician, any party) is talking then they are lying, I understand his position. But partisanship is different than the political. Politics, in the sense of “polis,” is far more important than merely an administrative tool because it is supposed to point to and ensure the good of all. Further, Christians have a king, not a guru or an example. Jesus reigns now and as Paul says, we are to be his ambassadors. There is no way around it, that’s political. But it’s an entirely different kind of politics than we are used to, a far more challenging politics.
Jesus told Pilate that his Kingdom was not of this world and if it were his followers would fight (Jn. 18:36). The Romans said “Caesar is lord,” proclaiming their power and might, that Rome was the pinnacle of humanity. When Paul proclaims “Jesus is Lord” he was making a political statement, implicitly challenging the empire—“and Caesar is not.” Today Christians should have a similar role. One that is faithful first to our king, and second challenges the current powers, not by falling prey to their nihilistic, scorched earth ways of being political, not by being partisan, but by being ambassadors for our king. Facing the reality of our current moment means taking stock of ourselves, making sure that we are actually living up to this call. It won’t look like the partisanship and political wrangling of our time. We may be called naïve and losers. Jesus told us we would be despised. But it is a better way.
The church is to be an example of the Kingdom of God on earth here and now, amidst the brokenness of the world. We are to be and offer a firm place to stand when the deep structures of culture are opposed to what is true and good and beautiful even when they proclaim to truly understand those things. We are to shine a light into the darkness, standing for truth and offering a compassionate way out of the futility that the world offers. It has the benefit of being true. Of being a better reality than any the world around us can offer.
