Several months ago, friends from our church helped organize a “Life Chain,” a nonconfrontational demonstration against abortion. When they invited me to participate, I agreed.
That Sunday afternoon, our family gathered with several hundred others to line one of our major streets. We stood ten feet apart, quietly holding signs. Some of the signs were blunt: ABORTION KILLS BABIES.
Others were a bit gentler: ADOPTION NOT ABORTION.
Others took the positive but less specific tack: LIFE IS THE BEST CHOICE.
During our two-hour vigil, I was fascinated by the reactions of passing motorists, some ninety per minute. (I counted!)
Many drove by honking their horns and giving the thumbs-up sign.
Several drove by with a different finger upraised, which I interpreted to mean they held a differing opinion on the abortion issue.
Most, however, kept their gaze straight ahead, studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone holding a sign.
One young man with shoulder-length hair drove the length of the line twice, horn blasting. Leaning out his window, he shouted with obvious anger, “I hope your sister never gets raped!”
“Me, too,” I whispered. “Me, too.”
All in all, it was a fairly calm experience compared to some of the others we’ve all heard about.
Perhaps you, too, read about the protests and counter-protests outside Immanuel Baptist Church in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas, home church of President Bill Clinton. Politically conservative Christians squared off against a group of gay and lesbian activists.
“You’re going to hell. Get used to it,” shouted one group.
“A narrow mind is a terrible thing to use,” shouted the other.
The leader of the first group told a reporter, “We’re here today to give the sodomites a little taste of God’s Word.”
While some activists on both sides may thrive on such heated confrontations, I suspect most of us long for a calmer, more compassionate means of resolving differences.
The continuing public debate over abortion, gay rights, religion in (or the purging of religion from) the public schools, the legal definition of the family, government funding of provocative art, the place of religious symbols on public property, sex education and the distribution of condoms continues to spill over into the church.
As we planned this issue of LEADERSHIP, we asked for the insights of our editorial advisers across the country. When asked what key questions we should be sure to address, one pastor said, “How ‘political’ should we let the church get? Sometimes you get the feeling that you have to be part of the ‘political right’ in order to be a true Christ follower.”
Not everyone agreed that “culture war” was even the right metaphor. “I think the term culture wars is one of the most dangerous for Christians to use today. I grew up in a fundamentalist subculture that was at war with everyone outside our narrow walls. How effective can Christian missionaries be if they are at war against the culture they’re trying to reach?”
We opted for the term because it so aptly describes the struggle, but we also appreciated the comments of David Rambo, president of The Christian and Missionary Alliance:
“Theologically, the church is a people ‘called out’ of society to continue the life and mission of Jesus. Though the people of God are salt and light in the world, the agenda of Jesus for the church is not to press vigorously its whole agenda on the public at large.
“We should not expect those outside the household of God to adopt every position firmly rooted in Scripture and the Judeo-Christian tradition.
“By our activism, often poorly conceived and stridently promoted, we have created an image of rigid, prejudiced people. More and more Americans will feel entirely justified and respectable saying no to the church. They may not be rejecting Jesus, just the people who profess to follow him.
“Abortion and homosexuality are unquestionably wrong. But, dare I say it, these are not the core issues of the faith. Let’s make the main thing the main thing: raising up Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners.
“This is not to say we should pull back into an isolationist mentality and do nothing more to preserve as many Christian values as possible within our society. God expects us to be salt in the world. But let’s do it in the context of God’s redeeming love for all men and women. We must focus on the gospel, proclaim it winsomely to secular people rather than alienating them on matters that are not central to our message. Problems such as abortion are discipleship matters more than frontline messages of the church to the world.”
In his classic The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis imagines some advice given by a senior devil to a junior devil on how to neutralize Christians:
“What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity and.’ You know-Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians, let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian coloring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing. The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart.”
The “Same Old Thing” is that core of the gospel Rambo refers to. If we can focus primarily on the transforming truth that Jesus Christ came to give life to sinners regardless of their political persuasions and personal lifestyles, then we can respond wisely and winsomely to the times.
Marshall Shelley is editor of LEADERSHIP.
Copyright © 1993 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
