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This article originally appeared in the January 16, 1976 issue of Christianity Today.

While blacks and women in America have been gaining rights and a share in decision-making on the national level that they should have had decades ago, another large group of Americans seems to be losing influence. Many Christians are now strangely intimidated into silence. Their contribution to public affairs debates is being increasingly disqualified as sectarian.

The "disfranchisement" of Christians in America, like the oppression of blacks and the ward or tutee status imposed on women, depends on myths. These myths are expressed without being clearly understood and are repeated, in many cases, by the very people whose interests they suppress. Undoubtedly the myth of white supremacy intimidated a substantial portion of the Negro population for decades, substantiated as it appeared to be by the continuing relegation of the Negro to servile or inferior status. But at a certain point in their history, blacks repudiated it. And once its existence was acknowledged, it was rather quickly rejected, in principle at least, by whites as well.

What of the status of women? We should distinguish between the biblical distinction of the function and role of the two sexes, accepted by all biblical Christians, and the complex of social and cultural attitudes now customarily if somewhat oddly entitled "male chauvinism." Needless to say, such a complex of attitudes, particularly when it was accepted or at least to some extent unresisted by women themselves, was a powerful factor in keeping them from enjoying the full measure of the dignity with which the Creator endowed them as well as the formal rights to which the Constitution and public laws entitle them.

The situation of Christians in America today, like that of blacks and women only a short time ago, also suffers from the prevalence of a derogatory and harmful mythology, substantial elements of which are accepted by Christians themselves. Not until Christians recognize that they are kept ineffective in a society major facets of which they themselves have shaped will they recognize the prevalence of these debilitating myths and do something to eradicate them from popular consciousness. Like the androcentric myths of male supremacy, the secularistic myths of Christian inferiority represent a whole complex of attitudes and assumptions. Their effect, unless bared and renounced, can put believers in a position that anti-Christian forces easily exploit.

Ours is an age of slogans rather than of mythology so called, and we may identify elements of the myth of Christian inferiority in terms of generally accepted slogans that support and maintain it. Consider the currently fashionable catchword "pluralism." In a "pluralistic" society such as ours, we are told, no one group should dominate or impose its opinions on others.

"Pluralism" is a concept void of content. It can mean everything or nothing. As Professor Perry London of the University of Southern California pointed out at a recent Wheaton College conference, the political freedoms of which Americans are justly proud—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association—have their origin in a relatively homogeneous society in which there was a broad consensus on fundamental values. A considerable degree of freedom could be allowed because there was a wide measure of agreement and self-discipline concerning the limits within which freedom was to be exercised. As the consensus has deteriorated, the limits have been forgotten, and the exercise of freedom in various areas is pushing toward extremes that will unravel the fabric of society and ultimately force upon us a desperate choice between chaos and authoritarian control.

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July (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51