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The evangelical left is equally skilled at reimagining the church's borders; it just uses a different set of signposts. Boycotts against gas-guzzling SUVs, complaints over "patriarchal" translations of the Bible, support for welfare spending, peace rallies to denounce American "imperialism"—these are the causes that distinguish the insiders from the outsiders. For several months I attended an evangelical church with a warm heart for social action. Shortly after I arrived, however, conflict broke out between church leadership and the congregation over the issue of race. Their longtime goal of "racial reconciliation" was being thwarted. To the leaders, the mostly white church simply did not look black enough. The reason given was that we (the whites) supported the institutions of racial injustice that pervade American life. How exactly we did this, or what we should do about it, was never made clear.

Protestants always have said that genuine faith produces changes on the outside, as well as the inside, of the believer. Drunks get sober and stay that way. Sunday morning golfers start opting for church. Cheaters decide to play it straight. Nothing written here should leave the impression that Christian discipleship means business as usual—whether it's the movies we watch or the people we marry. In a world at war with its Creator, following Jesus involves much more than being a "resident alien." It means being a subversive, a rebel, an insurgent.

Yet Jesus reminds us constantly that the life he intends for us, here and now, will utterly transcend the externals. "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." "You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me." "She loves much because she has been forgiven much." Tim Kellor of New York's Redeemer Presbyterian Church points out that the contrast Jesus draws in the Sermon on the Mount is not between the religious and the irreligious person. It's between the outwardly religious and the one whose heart has been transformed by grace. "Blessed are the pure in heart," Jesus promised, "for they shall see God."

Faith-based social conformity does not produce the pure in heart. Boundary markers can't inspire steadfast love and obedience to Christ. The outcome of that approach to spiritual life—the method of the Pharisee—is always the same: It crushes the soul. Only the Lord knows how many pilgrims have fallen into its deadly reef.

An unhealthy emphasis on externals also gives people an impossibly blinkered view of life. A 1934 meeting of the Baptist World Alliance in Berlin offers an extreme example. Delegates had arrived with apprehension about the new German Fuhrer and his Nazi Party. But many returned to America with favorable views. Why? As the Alliance noted: "It is reported that Chancellor Adolf Hitler gives to the temperance movement the prestige of his personal example, since he neither uses intoxicants nor smokes." A year earlier Hitler had burned down the Reichstag, declared a one-party state and imposed laws excluding Jews from government and public life. But Boston pastor John Bradbury gave the Nazis high marks for the enforcement of public morality. "It was a great relief to be in a country where salacious sex literature cannot be sold … The new Germany has burned great masses of corrupting books and magazines along with its bonfires of Jewish and communistic libraries."

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September (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47