Washington Christianity

Few would deny that the evangelical Christianity of the Ozark “Bible belt,” with its hillbilly gospel singers, is identifiably different from the Boston evangelicalism classically described in John P. Marquand’s The Late George Apley. It is my thesis that the metropolitan area of Washington, D. C., has its distinctive evangelical theology as well, and that this theology leaves much to be desired. Readers from this area will doubtless be appalled at what follows, discounting it as the product of too brief contact with Washington-area complexities, but let them remember De Tocqueville, whose to-the-mark portrait of the American character was in large part the result of observation from a foreign perspective.

In baldest terms, Washington Christianity is superficial, non-doctrinal, and experientialistic. It lacks theological substance. Like the church at Thyatira (Rev. 2:18 ff.), it is activistic, displaying “service and works,” exhibits some genuinely spiritual personality characteristics (“charity,” “patience”), but is relatively unconcerned with issues of sound doctrine versus false teaching, and is in consequence easily seduced by misdirected spirituality. To employ St. Paul’s “milk and meat” analogy (1 Cor. 3:2), Washington is a dairy farm, not a cattle ranch, and the milk is dilute at that.

Hard words! But the evidence is not difficult to come by. Can one, for example, read Wesley Pippert’s journalistic Faith at the Top (David C. Cook, 1973) without becoming aware of just how superficial Washington evangelicalism is? Discounting Mark Hatfield, whose sound theology manages to transcend even the turgid reportorial treatment of him, the portraits are of Washington Christian “heroes”—a former assistant director of the Secret Service, a player for the Redskins, etc.—most of whom once led appropriately gross pagan lives (smoking, drinking, and swearing), went through an interminable series of “personal encounters” with warm Christian personalities, suffered backslidings and conversions, and now are successful, radiant, beautiful Christians themselves.

I have attended some of the “prayer breakfasts” and “professional luncheons” organized by these Christians-at-the-top: the praying is minimal, often of doubtful biblical substance, and childishly stereotyped (“Lord, just make us more loving when we just fellowship together here and just help us just to …”). There is almost never deep and penetrating study of scriptural teaching. One gets the unshakable impression that those who attend do so not so much to grow as to identify with others at their own experience level. The same can be said of most of the prestigious evangelical churches. Where are the Spurgeons in Washington? And if they were here, how long would they survive?

One of the classic essays in contemporary religious sociology is Robert Bellah’s “Civil Religion in America” (Daedalus, Winter, 1967). Bellah correctly observed that in our national life we have created a generalized religion (“In God we trust”) that is more deistic than Christian and that attempts to link our country’s aspirations with eternal values. Washington evangelicals are by no means deists, but they have been infected by the amorphous, undefined character of civil religion.

Washington evangelicals dislike doctrine (what a cold word!). At the Law School where I taught this year, the trustees—all Washington Christians—finally managed, after three years of operation, to introduce a single “doctrinal” reference into faculty contracts. The reference? Faculty must pledge not to disparage the “Judeo-Christian” heritage for which the school stands. My children, on the basis of their Lutheran confirmation instruction, know more theology and are deeper into God’s Word than those guiding and directing an institution that was supposed to reintroduce the great profession of the Law to its revelational origins and biblical justification.

The real center of Washington religion is “personal experience.” One local pastor has dignified the phenomenon with the expression “relational theology.” Here I do not refer primarily to the Pentecostal, second-blessing, deeper-life movements that are strong in Washington as they are elsewhere in the seventies; the problem is more fundamental even than that. In general, one’s own style of spirituality or that of one’s group is made the norm to which others must conform to be a “beautiful Christian.” Scripture is subordinated to an allegedly normative Christian experience, instead of being allowed to set the standards itself.

To use another personal example: the young acting dean at our Law School seems to have a fixation about humility and meekness; he can spot “spiritual frauds” among his faculty by such tests as whether one refuses to paint one’s own office. Meanwhile, no systematic recruitment of Christian students goes on, so the 90 per cent non-Christian student body has virtually no objective witness presented to it. Biblical teaching goes by the board, while an extra-biblical standard of piety is pharisaically and sanctimoniously elevated to authoritative status.

Why has Washington Christianity become this way? Here are some reasons:

1. The Washington area has a transitory life-style, with politicians and the military constantly moving in and out; such an atmosphere is not conducive to depth in any area.

2. The government and the armed forces dominate Washington, and their bureaucracies are concerned with pragmatic success. Therefore little emphasis is placed on serious study of what is foundational—whether the Bible or anything else. Add to this a Virginia anti-intellectualism that goes back to antebellum days (maxim: “What Virginia needs is less Ph.D.’s and more F.F.V.’s [First Families of Virginia]”—see Marshall Fishwick’s The Virginia Tradition [1956]) and you have an atmosphere of facades, not substance.

3. The predominant “influential” churches in the area are Presbyterian and Episcopal, and these denominations have never recovered from their disastrous fall into liberalism. Therefore even when individual congregations have come under evangelical influence, there is no established tradition of sound doctrinal teaching, and Barthian-subjective attitudes are rife. Many lay leaders—“at the top” and otherwise—were converted late in life and still operate with essentially non-Christian value systems and attitudes.

Is there an answer to this sad state of things? There is indeed, and some valiant, scripturally oriented pastors of the Washington area are putting it daily into practice (one thinks immediately of Dick Halverson of Fourth Presbyterian). The answer is to teach the Bible’s doctrinal content, so that both secular social patterns and personal religious experience will continually be tested against that fundament. Even at the top, faith comes only by hearing the Word of God.

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.