Guinness’S New Covenant For America
The American Hour: A Time of Reckoning and the Once and Future Role of Faith,by Os Guinness (The Free Press, 458 pp.; $24.95, hardcover). Reviewed by James W. Sire, senior editor and campus lecturer for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and the author of The Universe Next Door and Chris Chrisman Goes to College (forthcoming from IVP).
What will keep America from degen erating into either chaos or tot alitarianism?
America is undergoing the fourth major crisis in its history, according to sociologist Os Guinness. In the first, the issue was independence; in the second, slavery; in the third, economic depression. Today ours is a “crisis of cultural authority.” America’s traditional cultural center is not holding: “Under the impact of modernity, the beliefs, ideals and traditions that have been central to Americans and to American democracy … are losing their compelling cultural power.”
In this closely reasoned, well-documented cultural analysis, the byroads of Guinness’s discourse keep coming back to his main concern: the crying need for a public philosophy—a common vision for the common good. In a society riven by a hundred contending faiths and nonfaiths, we need some common bond that will allow us to live together amid our deep differences.
In part one, Guinness details the multiple routes American culture has taken from Christian theism and Enlightenment deism to contemporary relativism and “cheerful” nihilism. From traditional American ideals (“openness, dynamism, self-reliance, egalitarianism, toughness, risk-taking, and enterprise”), Guinness shows how we have moved to a postmodern stance, which he defines as a series of rejections of traditional values: “a rejection of … content for style, truth and meaning for impressions, beliefs for games, ethical rules for social roleplaying.” It is this radical shift that points up the deep crisis of cultural authority and demands a studied response.
In part two, Guinness proposes a solution: the development of a new public philosophy. The past had supplied one: “One of America’s greatest achievements and special needs has been to create … a widely shared, almost universal, agreement on what accords with the common ideals and interests of America and Americans.” This common vision included “shared ideals, such as honesty and loyalty; shared commitments, such as the place of public service; and shared understandings, such as the relation of religion and public life.” The value of such a public philosophy is that it is not itself explicitly religious. Thus it “can be held in common by people of other faiths and no faith.”
But this original public philosophy has been lost. We must either find a new center or find a way to live in peace without a center. It is Guinness’s hope that forging a new political philosophy will keep America from degenerating into either chaos or some form of soft or hard totalitarianism.
It is in recognizing the value of America’s first liberty—religious liberty—that his hope of finding a public philosophy primarily lies. As Guinness puts it, “If liberty makes religious pluralism more likely, pluralism makes religious liberty more necessary.” Thus Guinness argues for “chartered pluralism”—”a vision of religious liberty in public life that, across the deep religious differences of a pluralistic society, guarantees and sustains religious liberty for all by forging a substantive agreement, or freely chosen compact, over the ‘Three R’s’ of religious liberty: rights, responsibilities, and respect.” We have the right to believe any faiths or none; we have the responsibility to guard this right for all people even though they disagree with us radically; and we have the duty to respect others in the process of disagreeing with them.
To this end Guinness argues for “civility”—a “respect for people, truth, the common good, and the American constitutional tradition.” In light of the atmosphere surrounding much public debate on abortion and homosexual rights, Guinness’s prescription for “principled participation” and “principled persuasion” is especially needed.
Four futures
Finally, in part three, Guinness paints a grim picture of our modern malaise and envisions four possible outcomes as America faces the end of the twentieth century. The first possibility is that America will become increasingly secular, deeply liberal, and prosperous. The second is that the religious dimension will decline, but that there will also be a slow, national decline as America sinks into being a second-or third-rate country. The third possibility is that some religious leader or group will “attempt to shore up national strength through reinforcing traditional values and shore up traditional values through manipulating their religious basis.”
The final possible outcome is that “there will be a massive revitalization of American life, including both its ideals and institutions, through a movement of decisive spiritual revival and reformation.” Guinness shuns prognostication on which outcome will ensue, but he thinks that either the first or fourth are more probable.
The argument in this book is too rich to deserve either an unreflective acceptance or a simple dismissal. All who have thought about these issues will find themselves somewhere in this book. My guess is that, like me, they will not always like what they find. Some of my pet ideas were weighed and found wanting. In most cases, however, I have found myself changing my mind; Guinness’s critique struck home.
About one matter, however, there should be little disagreement among serious Christians: American culture is in crisis. This crisis has a profoundly public dimension. In The American Hour, Os Guinness has demonstrated by his very mode of address that Christians can speak intelligibly in the public square and expect to be heard by more than a handful of fellow Christians huddled near a soapbox.
Beyond The Culture Wars
It is telling that a person born in China to English missionary parents and educated in England should be more concerned about America’s future than most Americans. But such is the case with Os Guinness, who went so far as to cross the ocean in 1984 to live in Washington, D.C. But even before then, his books of cultural analysis and discipleship had been making a home in the libraries of many American Christians: The Dust of Death (IVP), The Gravedigger Files (IVP), and Doubt (Lion). For the past several years he has worked on the Williamsburg Charter, an attempt to reconceptualize the First Amendment to allow for more friendly relations between church and state. CT had Ken Myers, formerly of Eternity magazine and National Public Radio, and the author of All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Crossway), talk to Guinness about the diversity of challenges facing American Christians.
The American Hour is about what you see as a crisis of cultural authority. Could you define what you mean by cultural authority?
I mean that America’s problem is much deeper than certain discrete problems such as family breakdown, the deficit, drugs, AIDS, discipline in the schools, crime, or whatever. I would argue that it is even deeper than what James Davison Hunter and others have described as the “culture wars.” A crisis of cultural authority means that the beliefs, ideals, and traditions that once inspired, disciplined, and restrained Americans have lost their binding address, their inner compelling power to shape culture.
How are Christians coping with this?
I don’t think American evangelicals have realized the problem. Too many still see the situation as a matter of “we” versus “they”—whether referring to humanists, New Agers, the “cultural elites,” or whomever. But the problem is far, far deeper than that. “We” have been profoundly affected just as much as “they.” Unless we see where the crisis comes from, and what it takes to resist it, evangelicals won’t be very effective in society.
How should we respond?
At the deepest level, we’ve got to start with the integrity of faith. Nietzsche observed that, under the impact of modernity, faith grows increasingly weightless. In biblical terms, that hollowing-out involves a loss of reality, or glory, for God. Such weightlessness characterizes much evangelicalism today. The rhetoric may be in place, but we have produced something like “Christian Lite.”
Also, for ten years, both conservatives and Christians have tended to respond to the culture wars by exploiting them for their own side. Our need now is for Christian leadership that can transcend the culture wars with vision and with policies that are just and good for Americans of all faiths and backgrounds. That is my deeper concern, both for America’s sake and the gospel’s.
Are you optimistic about the future?
Today’s situation is not rosy, but remember what Thomas Jefferson was predicting about evangelicals in the 1790s. The sun of the Enlightenment had risen, he believed, and soon the mists of evangelical superstition would roll away. Yet within five years he was proved utterly wrong. I’m not arguing that either a revival or an American renaissance will happen. They are simply what I would like to see. My notion of the American hour is that it’s a kairos moment that will be decisive one way or another. I expect the next 10 or 15 years will show which way it will go.
What institutions outside the church should evangelicals give attention to?
The two main areas where Christians are significantly underrepresented are the universities and the media. Christians often complain that we’ve been kept out of both institutions. Not at all. We suffer from a nearly 200-year tradition of anti-intellectualism, and now we’re paying for our irrelevance. We will be ineffective in the information age unless we think Christianly. We need to enter the universities; we need to enter the press and media. We need to become superb scholars, superb film directors, superb program producers, and so on. We need to win the right to influence these institutions from the inside. For every one Christian who goes to CBN, 20 or 30 others ought to go to CBS, ABC, or NBC.
The night has not yet fallen. I believe too many Christians are too pessimistic today. They talk and act as if the game were already lost. My analysis of the culture is that the door is still open. The game is still to be played and won. There’s still time to act and do something, although the time is urgent.
Calvin’S Plot To Reform The World
Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith,edited by Donald K. McKim (Westminster/John Knox Press, 414 pp.; $36.95, hardcover). Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition,edited by Donald K. McKim (Eerdmans, 447 pp.; $34.95, hardcover). Reviewed by D. G. Hart, director of Wheaton College’s Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, and elder in the Christian Reformed Church.
What does it mean to be Reformed? Being a follower of John Calvin has been the most common way of defining the Reformed tradition. In a narrow sense, Reformed is synonymous with Calvinist theology (which stresses human depravity and divine sovereignty in the plan of salvation) and Presbyterian polity.
Yet, in recent years, some church leaders and theologians have argued for a broader understanding of what it means to be Reformed. They contend that being Reformed has become synonymous with the cultural mandate of Scripture that calls believers to be obedient to God not just on Sunday but on every day of the week. This Reformed theology of culture was summarized well by Abraham Kuyper, who said, “There is not an inch in the entire area of our human life which Christ, who is sovereign of all, does not call ‘Mine!’ ”
The perpetual reformation
Two new books, both edited by Donald K. McKim, provide a helpful overview of the broad sense of the Reformed tradition. Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith is a handy reference work that describes important individuals, movements, and theological topics that have been prominent in the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions of Europe, Great Britain, and North America. It will be useful for scholars and pastors who need quick access to reliable and concise information, but it is not the kind of work that makes for bedtime reading (unless your goal is sleep).
Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition, however, is a lively and provocative collection that brings together both previously published and new material on theological themes in the Reformed tradition. Contributors include Donald Bloesch, Lewis Smedes, Geoffrey Bromiley, G. C. Berkouwer, John Leith, Hendrikus Berkhof, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, with sections on theological distinctives and foundations, the church, the sacraments, liturgy and worship, the calling of the church and individuals, and contemporary theological developments. Major Themes should prove instructive for both Reformed insiders as well as for novices.
The contributors see in Reformed theology a blueprint for aggressive cultural transformation. To be sure, traditional subjects such as God’s sovereignty, justification by faith, predestination, original sin, and church polity receive adequate coverage. But most of the authors, especially in Major Themes, are reluctant to describe the Reformed position on any particular doctrine for fear of denying the theological latitude within the tradition and succumbing to the exclusivism that such definition entails. Rather than calling for a return to Reformed orthodoxy, they opt instead for the maxim ecclesia reformata semper reformanda (the church that has been reformed needs always to be reformed) as the best description of the Reformed tradition’s controlling sentiment.
One can only question the wisdom of hanging the entire weight of Reformed identity on the tattered thread of ceaseless revisionism. Still, the contributors argue that what sets the Reformed tradition apart from Lutheran and Roman Catholic as well as other Christian expressions is its effort to heed the Bible’s cultural mandate to be faithful to God not just in the spiritual but in all areas of life. While Roman Catholics and Lutherans historically have focused on questions of personal salvation (justification), Calvinists went on to address the practical effects of grace (sanctification) in the lives of individuals and within the community of faith. According to the Roman Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, Calvin’s “intense spirit of moral activism” transformed the other-worldliness of Lutheranism and “inspired Protestantism with the will to dominate the world and to change society and culture.”
Making friends with Wesley
Discussions about the nature of Reformed identity should be of interest to evangelical readers. Throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, a chief divide has been whether the evangelical tradition is chiefly concerned with preserving a normative theology (emphasized by Reformed churches) or a normative piety (holiness and Wesleyan). If these books are right, then the Wesleyan and Reformed parties may have more in common than typically supposed, for the desire to lead a holy and sanctified life is not just a Reformed conviction but also a central tenet in holiness/Wesleyan circles.
But there is also a danger in this broad conception of Reformed faith. Calvin was careful to distinguish between spiritual and temporal affairs, calling attempts to look for the kingdom in things that make up this world “a Judaic folly.” The “Reformed world and life view” articulated in these books at times loses sight of this distinction—though it is as much a part of the Reformed tradition as the transformation of culture.
At a time when evangelicals rush aggressively—and, some might say, naïvely—into cultural and political arenas with the desire of cultivating justice, mercy, peace, and righteousness, it may be worth remembering, as the first question and answer to the Heidelberg Catechism reminds us, that the only hope for deliverance from the miseries of this world is “the precious blood” of Jesus Christ, not in what believers do as part of their faithfulness to God.
