Theologian Carl F. H. Henry talks with the Christianity Today Institute about Christianity and culture.
Roger Nicole has written that “to impose one’s culture on a group of people is mischievous because it demands on the part of the nationals a sacrifice of their own culture that the gospel does not require.” We usually think of this in the context of foreign missions. Is there a danger of this happening at home? In other words, is evangelical expression of the gospel too dependent on white, middle-class values?
The biblical message is classless and colorless, and its divinely revealed commandments are not reducible to personal “values”—including those of white, middle-class persons. But some who routinely assail distinctive American values or the Western way of life write not only as if these options necessarily prostitute the gospel, but as if some existing alternative is virgin-pure. As recently as the mid-1980s they were applauding Marxist socialism as if it were born in Bethlehem.
Coercive imposition of revelatory doctrines and moral imperatives upon others violates the voluntary character of true faith. But when mere tradition or custom is involved, to link acceptance of the gospel with social conventions is unjustifiable. Africans should feel as much liberty to worship God under the open skies as Americans do to gather in buildings. But an immoral or sinful practice should not be condoned as an acceptable alternative to biblically ordered behavior.
The call of Christ often requires a turning away from the trappings of secularism. In terms of American culture, what does the gospel require us to reject? What aspects of our culture should one not find in the church?
A generation ago it was modernists with the social gospel who thought that political transformation was the best way to reshape society; in our time, some fundamentalists have sought to “re-Christianize” America by legislative changes, Reconstructionists have promoted government predicated on Mosaic moral and ceremonial law, and some Catholics have championed John Courtney Murray’s philosophy of the common good as holding the most promise of a just society. But any effort to transform the unregenerate world into a utopian society by legislative alteration is doomed. It exaggerates the potency of political reformation, and it ignores the fact that the only durable and authentic “new society” already exists in the form of the regenerate church, which, as a colony of heaven, has citizenship in two worlds.
What holds primacy is what Christianity promotes as a priority, not what it requires us to reject. Worship, prayer, scriptural meditation, and obedience are the church’s spiritual lifeline in view of her supernaturally given origin, continuance, and mission. A church that knows itself to be a divinely engendered new society of regenerate believers won’t try to impose antiabortion laws on secular society while “the people of God” themselves accommodate it, or think that political activism is the sure mark of a dedicated Christian community. If political engagement defines the nature and extent of the church’s mission, then both politics and the church are in dire trouble.
This gets at the real identity of the church. Christians engage vulnerably in political and cultural activity if they merely presuppose the legitimacy of some prevalent view of the nature and mission of the church and concentrate their energies on social involvement. The cost of such engagement can be appalling, because the world easily penetrates and neutralizes a constituency unsure of its own nature and mission.
Today one finds churches in America that fit practically any subculture—yuppie churches, ethnic churches, urban churches—even churches for fans of “heavy metal” music. Is this a good sign?
Pursuit of subculture is no more virtuous than pursuit of culture; the First Heavy Metal Church of Big Bang, the Second Rock Music Church of Boulder, and the Third Yuppie Church of Brooks Brothers face the same obligation that ethnic and urban churches do to mirror the transnational, transracial, and transcultural character of Christ’s church. The cultural aberrations that sporadically appear as the new wave of the future tend sooner or later to vanish as suddenly as they arose. As long as such phenomena can be used in the service of the gospel without claiming normativity for them, they can fill a constructive role. While some churches have found them useful in attracting absentees to a hearing of the gospel, others have merely imposed on nongrowing congregations an additional reason for going elsewhere. It is the gospel that is to be central, not the trappings. But the trappings may often be the donkey that carries the hitchhiker to church; hopefully, he will dismount the donkey and come to Christ.
Historically, American evangelicalism has been associated with the Democratic party. The last two or three decades have seen a shift in evangelical political leanings toward the Republicans. In either case, how can the church influence the political process without becoming co-opted by that process?
The best place for Christians to be involved is at the local precinct level and the ballot box, encouraging competent and just candidates, discussing as did the Founding Fathers the basic issues of political philosophy, and praying for those in government. The apostle Paul indicates that the Christian’s public engagement should mirror the social commandments of the Mosaic Law (Rom. 13:8–10). The nation-state is not to be the arbiter of rival metaphysical or theological views. The Christian has his or her own reasons for preferring one option over another and is free to show that the speculative supports that others invoke for their alternative preferences are not compelling.
George Marsden in Religion and American Culture points to the early alliance between higher education and Christianity as a major factor in “shaping cultural values.” To what extent are today’s evangelical colleges and universities shaping America’s cultural values?
Many evangelical colleges and universities today are in a costly transition stage. Seldom is the Christian world-life view any longer inculcated on a curriculum-wide basis, and the unbroken authority of the Bible is not made an issue. Concerned critics warn that this situation compromises the oncoming generation.
There is no doubt, however, that evangelical colleges and universities still graduate many alumni devoutly dedicated to Christ, and who readily enter specifically Christian ministries and live lives that escape most of the vices common to our generation. Evangelical graduates maintain an interest in church attendance, although they reflect uncertainties about the precise nature of the church and in this respect reflect the ambiguities of both the ecumenical and the evangelical movements. They are, however, exemplars of the Protestant work ethic, are thrifty and yet hospitable, and are vocationally responsible.
There are now probably several hundred evangelical graduates who are politically involved at secondary and tertiary levels. But their presence is less significant in secular mass-media posts and on secular university campuses. Yet there are exceptions of sufficient number to indicate that larger possibilities exist.
You have written a good deal about neopaganism. Could you identify some of the ways in which the church can resist the trend toward materialistic deism?
Once the church knows her real identity—a new society of regenerate spiritual rebels and the only community that will pass into God’s eternal presence—she can face the world without perverting her mission. Communicants who are leaving politically oriented churches to find a personal relationship with God rightly sense their church’s confusion over priorities. Yet the church aware of her true nature and calling out of the world is poised to be light and salt to all humanity. The church is not to go into hiding but is to proclaim to the world not only the saving gospel in which believers share, but also the criteria by which Christ at his return will judge all humanity and the nations. Moreover, regenerate believers are to exemplify obedience in the public order by political activity to the limit of their competence and ability. The penalty for nonengagement is to be ruled by those whom believers would not prefer. Believers should encourage and promote just statutes and in good conscience live by them. Where statutes preclude doing what God requires or requires what God forbids, they should “obey God rather than man” (Acts 5:29). There are other circumstances in which they may well publicly identify their commitments in terms of revelatory divine law, as when legislators ask church bodies to make known their views on public issues, or when, identifying themselves first with the body of humanity on matters of equality before the law, they additionally indicate their religious loyalties. Whenever the church publicly promotes positions that its members violate in practice, its integrity is called in question.
What did the apostle Paul mean when he said, “I have become all things to all men?” Doesn’t the church risk its integrity and authenticity if it tries to be everything to everyone?
Paul doesn’t mean that he becomes worldly to win worldlings or that he becomes pharisaical to win Pharisees. No concession to Jewish legalism or to Gentile antinomianism is involved. He didn’t want to encourage people to reject Christ through a misunderstanding of what is really at stake. Those who have conscientious scruples, even if mistaken, must be encouraged to honor conscience while it is being educated, and those who affirm freedom must be encouraged to honor freedom while they learn to distinguish that bondage to Christ is in fact the law of love. It is the gospel that must be central; and it must not be rendered controversial on the edge of inessentials and personal preferences. Paul stresses personal liberty, yet emphasizes that no offense should be given to Jews or Gentiles or the church, but that the profit of the many should be exalted above personal advantage (1 Cor. 10:31–33).
