I recently came across a link to the satirical Christian website, The Babylon Bee, which directed me to this clever tongue-in-cheek headline: New Study Suggests Arguing About Politics Is Most Effective Method Of Evangelism.
Under the heading was a mock news report that begins: “A comprehensive study by LifeWay released Tuesday, confirms that arguing vigorously about politics is still the most effective way for Christians to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying world.
“The results indicated that an overwhelming majority of new converts to Christianity were convinced to give their lives to Christ after suffering defeat in debates over policy positions or specific politicians.
“‘Our study strongly suggests that owning political foes translates to winning souls for Christ,’ a LifeWay spokesman said. ‘Whether online or in person, Christians should seek to find someone from the other side of the aisle and just flatten them, exactly like the early disciples did.’”
The ersatz report concludes, perspicaciously: “At publishing time, Christians nationwide had heeded the advice and were setting out to squabble over politics in Jesus’ name.”
Altogether sad but true. For years I’ve marveled at how political my own denomination, the United Church of Christ (UCC), has become. Once a mainstay of the American religious scene, its current bureaucracy seems focused almost entirely on politics and social issues, to the exclusion of just about all else. Here in Massachusetts, in fact, the Conference refers to itself as a “Progressive Church.”
I guess this leaves out the 75-80% of Americans who, according to Gallup, do not self-identify as “progressive.” Maybe I’m crazy, but perhaps this isn’t the best evangelistic strategy, particularly as the denomination struggles desperately to keep its head above water.
Joseph Bottum frames it a bit more starkly in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: “By its own account the UCC’s intellectual life has come to an end. And as its numbers catastrophically decline, the ordinary practice of its members has ceased to influence the culture.
“The United Church of Christ is left with little except its putatively prophetic voice – a strikingly unoriginal voice at that. All the issues on which the church opines, and all the positions it takes, track the usual run of liberal American politics. The key, however, is not the mostly uninteresting politics of the church bureaucracy but the astonishing lack of influence those political statements have.
“With no deposits into the account of its prestige by accommodating the economic and political props of the nation—and no influence on the culture from the everyday practices of its congregants—the prophetic demands of the United Church of Christ cash out to nothing. No one listens, no one minds, no one cares.”
I hate to say it, but I mostly agree with this harsh and tragic assessment. For years I’ve stood on my soapbox arguing that few people wish to get up on a Sunday morning to hear the very same political and social issues they’ve been bombarded with throughout their week. Besides, as I’ve said elsewhere, reasonable and faithful people can and do disagree over the best way to implement within society Christ’s call to be faithful and loving.
More to the point, most people aren’t looking for divisive politics when choosing a church, but for religion. I recently attended a church service where the one message I came away with was that I should avoid using plastic straws. Really?
A counterargument insists that the church must be active and relevant, as a faithful response to our contemporary culture’s demand that Christians stay out of politics and social ordering. Let reason and the sciences do the heavy lifting, they argue. The logic here is that the church is free to gather as it wishes, but its social and political sentiments must be restricted to the personal, private sphere. Properly, in other words, religion has no place in the public square.
Enter Abraham Kuyper, an unlikely hero to be sure. A theologian, journalist, and one-time prime minister of the Netherlands, Kuyper lived from 1837-1920. In religious circles he is best known for his theory of the “spheres.”
His argument, in short, is that at Creation God devised a universe infused with differing spheres of knowledge and influence. Each of these spheres, religion and politics being but two among many, had a specific role to play in the proper ordering of the world. Each sphere, and the individuals contained therein, were to use their particular knowledge and influence in advancing God’s commandment to Adam and Eve (i.e. humanity) to “subdue” and “have dominion” over all the earth.
We all have a job to do, in other words, by using our own particular, God-given gifts and talents to further the divine cause of human flourishing.
Unlike the Modernist view, that science and reason are “objective” and thus preeminent (particularly in their relation to religion), Kuyper argued that each sphere has a valid contribution to make, but none is inclusive of God’s grand design.
As the mainline Protestant churches of the early 20th century embraced Modernist theories centered on reason and science, even those skeptical of this move conceded science’s preeminence. Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, allowed for the supremacy of science in the natural realm while holding fast to religion’s “spiritual” authority.
Kuyper’s genius, contrary to his contemporary co-religionists, was to claim that not only is religion faith-based, but so is science! Neither is capable of fully encompassing the whole of human experience. Each has a role to play in human flourishing – and the one needs the other.
This is, as I say, a departure from Modernist thinking. It dethrones reason and science from their ascendant perch. And yet, notably, it does not reject the inherent value of either.
One of the significant intellectual events of the 20th century was the ultimate (and, I would say, predictable) failure of the Modernist project, the idea that reason and science were objective and thus could unite society into a single conversation or public philosophy.
As early as the 1930s, Walter Lippmann famously conceded the failure of this universal consensus (something he at one time vigorously championed) and vainly tried turning to natural law as the means to unite one and all. (Spoiler: it didn’t work.)
Post-modernism is the direct result of Modernism’s failure, and has become its awkward successor. The idea here is that not only is there no universal truth or consensus, but that the world is fractured into sub-groups and sub-truths (into singular, alien spheres). Indeed, never shall the twain meet.
This has even led to the widespread, credulous belief that each person possesses his or her own truth, unique unto that individual alone! There simply is no common ground. Which is pretty much where we are today.
But Kuyper’s argument bridges these seemingly opposite views. His prescription is that each sphere should have a hearing in the public square, not just certain prescribed ones. Religion plays an essential role, informing, correcting, and, when appropriate, supporting the larger mission of society. Religion here is no longer private, nor is it, it’s essential to note, preeminent with regard to public matters.
So here’s where I have a problem with today’s mainline church. It has, over the years, abdicated its role, its ordained sphere, its specific spiritual, religious mandate, in favor of a broad and altogether bland public philosophy. It has, in short, forgotten it is the church and not a governmental agency. (We are not, as one author succinctly put it, “saved by how we vote”!)
It’s not that the church should be silent, as many today would have it, but that it should be, first and foremost, the church (rather than yet another political interest group in Washington, D.C. – whether it be liberal or conservative).
As Kuyper reminds us, in the beginning God imbued each of us with a certain role to play within Creation. It is sin, however, that lures us into assuming our expertise in one sphere translates into our being an authority in another, one for which we very well may be woefully ill-equipped.
To this point, I’ve often joked that there’s a reason I’m a pastor and not a businessman. Accepting and embracing the role God has preordained for us is, simply put, the secret to a happy life and, by extension, the secret to a proper flourishing for all of humanity.