Okay, I’ll admit it. As part of a family that’s belonged to the UCC (or what eventually became the UCC) for close to 300 years, I have an ongoing ‘family quarrel’ with it.
By way of explanation, I once watched an interview with a local pastor on community access TV. Something he said really struck me, both for its brevity and its unassuming truth.
“The problem with the mainline church,” he said, “is that it sought to befriend the world and in the process became the world.”
What he was referring to, at least implicitly, was the “Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy” from the 1920’s and 1930’s.
The origins of this debate can be ascribed to the burgeoning idealism of the day. By this time many had come to accept, if unconsciously, German idealism’s imaginative claim that history was moving inexorably toward perfection. Each age would be replaced by another, each part of a process of positive progressive change.
The turn of the 20th century betrayed this newfound optimism. The world was now on the cusp of solving humanity’s most vexing problems, aided in no small part by the transformative insights of science and reason. History was marching manifestly, in stages, toward an ever-higher consciousness and greater competence. The sky was the limit.
Many observers believed, for instance, that the Great War (WW1) was going to be “the war to end all wars.” Once this conflict was resolved, all wars would cease as civilization moved beyond the errors and false passions of the past, advancing toward the sunny uplands of peace and prosperity. (Of course, the history of the 20th century fell somewhat short of this well-meaning, though altogether deluded prognostication.)
A good number in the religious community, swept up in the euphoria of this utopian optimism (despite German idealism’s decidedly secular, anti-religious origins), saw an opportunity to fix society’s ills. Encouraged by efforts to institute better labor conditions in America’s overcrowded cities, universal education, and even sobriety (to name but a few), many church leaders believed the moment was ripe to Christianize all aspects of American society.
Leaders within the mainline churches (a group generally consisting of Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and the UCC), took to this like flies to honey. It promised to realize finally Christ’s longstanding command to effect the good.
The fundamentalists, however, took a dimmer view, fearing that once the church got involved in worldly affairs, it would lose its gospel-centered focus. They argued for keeping a clear separation between church and state, focusing more on personal salvation and the historic biblical witness (the more traditional approach of the earlier mainline churches).
Even the editor of the-then highly influential mainline publication, The Christian Century (the name itself is telling), a strong voice for the emerging Modernist stance and champion of the new “Social Gospel,” worried that the church might indeed lose its way as it got more and more involved in secular, worldly affairs.
History has proven him right. Today, the mainline churches (or, as they are sometimes called today, “old-line” or “sideline”), tend to focus almost exclusively on politics and social issues, rather than the gospel (which they falsely assume everybody already knows). Meanwhile, the people in the pews can’t define what “sin” means.
One of the obvious difficulties with this approach is that we today live in a highly partisan, highly conflicted political culture. People are hurting from these vicious, ongoing political battles. Personally, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go to church for more of the same.
When I was ordained, the liturgy defined my role as “pastor and teacher,” not politician, social worker, or social activist. My vocation, in other words, is to teach people how to think and live theologically. How they apply this to the various social and political issues of the day is their job, not mine.
Whenever I say this, and I say it a lot, someone will invariably ask, “So are we then to do nothing (about the world around us)?”
Which brings us to Augustine. Living amid the tragic decline of a once great Rome, Augustine, in his landmark book, City of God, muses on the Christian response to worldly loss (a loss that affected him profoundly), as well as on the Christian’s proper relationship to the culture in which one lives.
Augustine borrows from the Apostle Paul’s distinction between worldly existence and the religious life. “Walk not according to the flesh,” Paul had advised in the Book of Romans, “but according to the Spirit.”
For Paul and Augustine, there are two very distinct metaphysical realms or, if you will, kingdoms or cities.
This is consistent with Jesus’ earlier response to the Pharisees who famously attempt to trap him about paying taxes to the hated Roman occupiers. They know that no matter how he answers the question he will offend either the Romans or his fellow Jews.
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he says, “and to God the things that are God’s.”
In the end, the issue for Augustine is not whether to be engaged in the affairs of public life, but how.
In my next post, I’ll take up this important question…