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Nowadays the government is far less likely to acknowledge the Christian consensus in the United States, if indeed one still exists. The change occurred with such breathtaking speed that anyone born in the last 30 years may wonder what Christian consensus I am talking about. The Supreme Court has banned prayer in schools, some teachers try to prohibit their students from writing about any religious themes, television rarely mentions Christians except in derogation, and courts routinely strip manger scenes and other religious symbols from public places.

It seems incredible that the words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance only in 1954, and the phrase "In God we trust" became the nation's official motto in 1956. Much of the outrage of the Religious Right traces back to the swiftness of this cultural shift. Harold O. J. Brown, one of the early evangelical activists against abortion, says that he and others experienced the Roe v. Wade ruling as a wake-up call in the middle of the night. Christians had viewed the Supreme Court as a mostly trustworthy group of sages who drew their conclusions from the moral consensus of the rest of the country. Suddenly the bombshell dropped, a decision that divided the country along fault lines: either the moral consensus had changed dramatically, or the Supreme Court was badly out of touch.

Since that time, other court decisions—establishing a "right to die," redefining marriage, protecting pornography—have sent conservative Christians reeling. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, hyperbolically called the 1963 ruling against prayer in public schools "the darkest hour in the history of the nation." The moral landscape has indeed changed. Every year the church in the United States draws closer and closer to the situation faced by the New Testament church: an embattled minority living in a pluralistic, pagan society. Christians in places like Sri Lanka, Tibet, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia have faced open hostility from their governments for years. But in the United States, with a history so congenial to the faith, we don't like it. What should we do about it? And how should grace flavor our response?

I must admit that after rereading Niebuhr's book recently, I am no more confident of my position than I was 25 years ago. Of all my friends, a group of communal Hutterians, German immigrants who fled Hitler's Germany, demonstrate lives most faithful to Jesus' teaching. Yet I also admire the tradition of the Christian Reformed Church, which advocates "bringing every thought captive" under the mind of Christ; that tiny "transforming" denomination has had an enormous influence on science, philosophy, and the arts.

I feel pulled this way and that. When a Christian consensus held sway in the United States, these issues were less urgent. Now, all of us who love our faith and also our nation must decide how best to express that care. I offer three preliminary conclusions that should apply, I believe, no matter what church-state model we choose.

First, as should be clear by now, I believe that grace is the Christian's main contribution to the world. As Gordon MacDonald said, the world can do anything the church can do except one thing: it cannot show grace. At the same time, I believe we Christians are not doing a very good job of dispensing grace to the world. We stumble especially in this field of faith and politics.

I know how easy it is to get caught up in the polarization, to shout across the picket lines at the "enemy" on the other side. "Love your enemy," Jesus commanded. For Will Campbell, that meant the redneck Klansmen who killed his friend. For Martin Luther King, Jr., that meant the white sheriffs who sicced their police dogs on him. Who is my enemy? The promiscuous person dying of AIDS? The abortionists? The Hollywood producers polluting our culture? The secularists attacking my moral principles? The drug lords ruling our inner cities? If I cannot show love to such people, then I have not understood Jesus' gospel. I am stuck with law, not the gospel of grace. If my activism, however well-motivated, drives out such love, I betray Jesus' kingdom.

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February 3 1997, Vol. 41, No. 2