In the last article in this series, we discussed the most basic principle to rightly understand the “church v. state” conundrum. That principle was this—there are two kingdoms, Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon will lose. Now we’ll build on this foundation and introduce the next building block:
Principle 2: God’s kingdom is not America or any other country
What hath the “Jerusalem that is above” to do with Washington D.C., London, Moscow, Beijing, Mexico City, and Buenos Aries? Nothing. That is, not directly. God’s kingdom is not the USA, Great Britain, or Russia … not even Barbados. American Christians may nod their heads at this point.
I’d like to ask you to stop. Think for a moment. Then realize that I really mean that. America has nothing to do with God’s kingdom. That means something important for the church v. state issue—but more on that later.
The “Babylon” which the Apostle John describes in Revelation 17-18 represents Satan’s kingdom in all its flavors. Some interpreters see Babylon only as a geo-political foe which will rise in the last days—it only has relevance for the tribulation. I think it’s more than that.
As I said earlier, Babylon is all the societies, cultures, values, and systems that oppose God throughout history. No matter their outward form, they have the same origin—Satan. This evil empire’s aim is to be a stealthy narcotic, dulling our senses, distracting us from the Gospel light with … whatever, all while disguising its presence. This is why the image of the high-class prostitute is so apt—Babylon is seduction to idolatry,[1] in any form. It entices us to give ourselves to something other than God.
Of course, this “dominion of darkness” (Col 1:13) will take final form as a nation state in the last days, but it still exists here and now as a nefarious shadow behind the curtain. Before it assumes legal and political shape later, it exists now as influence, as values, as worldviews, as wicked ethics, as degenerate cultures in various local contexts. Think of it as a sinister “e pluribus unum,” in that “out of many” there is really “one” malevolent force—Satan.
Jesus’ kingdom is also in an “already/not yet” state, and it will also take legal and political shape once He returns and topples Babylon (Rev 19). It, too, exists for the moment as subversive and countercultural influence, values, worldviews, and cultures. Ideally, these “cultures” are not those of nation states, but the particular, authentic expressions of the true Jesus communities within those countries. “Out of the many” that is the global church there is “one” prime mover—the Lord Jesus Christ.
Both kingdoms are “already, but not yet” in this “field” that is the world, which means the countries where we live are simply the individual battlespaces of a global conflict. Cultures, values, worldviews, and influence ebbs and flows from one side to the other as local and regional actions in a much larger war.
This means “Babylon” is the USA. It’s China. It’s Ukraine. It’s Russia. It’s every part of this world, which the Apostle Paul says is under the sway of “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient,” (Eph 2:2). But these same places are also “the kingdom of God” in the form of individual Jesus communities—the “wheat” and the “weeds” inhabit the same battlespace at the same time. To borrow a cliché from Vietnam, it’s “hearts and minds” that each kingdom is after, because that’s what drives our actions (cp. Prov 4:23; Lk 6:45).
So, I say again—God’s kingdom is completely distinct from any country on this earth. This is what Jesus meant when He said this to Pilate:
My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.
John 18:36
He didn’t simply mean “I ain’t from here!” or “my kingdom is located in heaven, not on earth.” The kingdom will be here (Rev 21-22)—Belinda Carlisle was right about heaven being a place on earth. What Jesus meant is something like “my kingdom is totally different than anything here.” It’s from another sphere, another realm, “from another place.” It’s a different thing (cp. Jn 8:23).[2] It’s a kingdom predicated on His loving sacrifice which prompts our loving allegiance and obedience (Deut 6:5; Mk 12:28-32). If Jesus’ kingdom had merely been from this sphere, concerned with borders, power, and politics, His disciples would have fought to prevent His capture.
But it isn’t, so they didn’t.
This means whenever Christians conflate kingdom values with nationalist interests[3] as if they were the same thing, they’re making a terrible mistake. They are not the same thing—not even close. God’s kingdom is distinct from every nation state.
We’ll explore what that means in the next article.
[1] “… any form of worship or religious practice presented or interpreted by the writer or speaker as equivalent to this; the worship of a false god,” (“idolatry,” noun, no. 1a, OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/91099?redirectedFrom=idolatry (accessed April 29, 2023)).
[2] The preposition in ἡ βασιλεία ἡ ἐμὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου seems to express derivation. For commentary, see (1) Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John, in NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), pp. 769-770; (2) C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London: SPCK, 1960), p. 447; (3) Alvah Hovey, Commentary on the Gospel of John, in American Commentary (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1885), p. 366.
[3] “Advocacy of or support for the interests of one’s own nation, esp. to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations,” (s.v. “nationalism,” noun, no. 1a, OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/125289?redirectedFrom=nationalism (accessed April 29, 2023)).
We continue our discussion of the relationship between the church and the state (see the series here). The previous article in this series introduced the topic of church v. state. We discussed two critical paradigm shifts with which any American Christian audience must reckon (a task in which it sometimes fails). We presented three general operating environments in which the church often operates—their boosters often see these frameworks as the preferred, ideal paradigm. I then offered a precis of the five principles which should inform any discussion of the “church v. state” problem. Now, in this piece, we’ll examine the first and most basic principle for considering this issue. Here it is …
There are two kingdoms; Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon will lose.
The Apostle John paints a picture of two competing kingdoms—Babylon and Jerusalem (Rev 17-18). This contrast is the story of history and reality. We’ll sketch each kingdom, in turn.
1. Babylon is Satan’s kingdom, symbolized as a charming seductress.
John’s picture fades in on a pretty woman sitting atop a beast.
The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.
Revelation 17:4
John tells us the woman’s name is “Babylon the great,” that she is a prostitute, and the mother of all the abominations of the earth (Rev 17:5). This woman is a figure for the beguiling ways Satan tempts us to follow him.
For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.
Revelation 18:3
Babylon, personified as an attractive call girl, offers “wine” to the masses resulting in “adulteries,” which God often uses as a metaphor for spiritual rebellion (e.g. Hosea 1-3). The nations lust after her, buying her services, committing “adultery.” The merchants trade with her, less interested in her physical charms than in the money they can make in trade. Like the sinister villain in Stephen King’s Needful Things, Babylon offers up whatever we desire with the aim of keeping us in her embrace. She buys us all, each in our own way. “By your magic spells all the nations were led astray,” (Rev 18:23).
This passage ends with Babylon’s destruction, her ruins aflame (“the smoke from her goes up for ever and ever,” Rev 19:3). The merchants, the heads of state, and all those involved in the economic system which abets this “trade” will cry aloud in shock when they behold the end of everything they know (Rev 18:4-20)—the “kingdom” which shaped their reality has fallen.
In the bible’s storyline Babylon is, of course, the empire which conquered Judah, destroyed the first temple, and carried the flower of the southern kingdom off into exile. Beyond the purely historical reference to that specific calamity, scripture later takes “Babylon” and uses it to personify evil and all that opposes God—it’s a figure, a metaphor, a representation. The prophet Isaiah speaks darkly about the king of Babylon, yet his words seem to shade over to a deeper meaning—perhaps referring to Satan himself (Isa 14:3ff). Zechariah speaks of an angel crushing into a basket a woman who represents sin and sending her far away to the east … where Babylon lies (Zech 5).
Now, in Revelation 17-18, God has poured out all His judgments, “Babylon” has fallen, and now Jesus returns to the world He left behind on that day so long-ago outside Jerusalem (Acts 1; Rev 19). In this passage, Babylon is Satan’s kingdom; and the system, culture, world, and values that oppose God have finally crumbled to bits—destroyed from on high with sudden violence (Rev 18:21).
When Jesus returns with “the armies of heaven” (Rev 19:14), He quickly destroys the beast, the false prophet, and the entire army which they mustered. This is a cosmic clash of two opposing forces—darkness v. light. Each character is the opposite of the other on the divine playbill:
Antichrist is Satan’s delegate → Jesus is the Father’s delegate.
Antichrist has an army → Jesus has an army.
Antichrist loses → Jesus wins.
After the millennium, God releases Satan, who tries to salvage what he can from the wreckage—a Battle of the Bulge-like gamble, a last roll of the dice (Rev 20:7-10). Now the struggle isn’t between the delegates, but between the supreme players themselves—it’s God who immolates Satan from on high with a divine fireball (Rev 20:9-10).
The evil empire falls in Revelation 17-18. The coup leaders are each cast into the lake of fire (Rev 19:20; 20:10). God has meted out rewards to the righteous, and judgment to the wicked (Rev 20:4-6, 11-15). Now that God has swept the debris of Satan’s coup away, God brings about His own kingdom (Rev 21-22). Creation is remade, sin is destroyed, and God finally has the community He’s been working to re-create since our first parents made their fateful choice. “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them,” (Rev 21:3)—Emmanuel, indeed (cf. Isa 7:14; Mt 1:23)!
2. Jerusalem is God’s kingdom, fighting with Babylon over the same ground.
Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds tells us about His kingdom in a powerful way. He explained:
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
Matthew 13:24-26
Jesus wants to talk about the kingdom and this parable is an allegory[1] to explain all about it. This is one of the few parables where Jesus identifies the true referent for every character in the story; you have (1) a farmer, (2) an enemy, (3) a wheat crop, and (4) a bunch of weeds. The setup is simple; a farmer sows seed but it turns out bad!
That is terrible. Something’s gotta be done …
The owner’s servants came to him and said, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?”
“An enemy did this,” he replied.
The servants asked him, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?”
Matthew 13:27-28
The field was supposed to be one thing, but now it’s a hot mess. The servants think they should go clean it up—why not go and rip out the weeds? What does Jesus think?
“No,” he answered, “because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”
Matthew 13:29-30
Jesus says no. He says the field will never be cleansed until the harvest—Jesus will give orders to sort it all out then. But, for now, just leave it alone—let the weeds and the wheat all grow up together. If they try to pick out the weeds now, they’ll probably just rip out a whole bunch of wheat. Better to leave it.
In Matthew’s gospel, the writer then inserts a few other parables about the kingdom, but circles back to Jesus’ explanation of our story. This is an intriguing story, so much so that the disciples wanted to hear Jesus explain it once they had a chance to speak to Him alone (Mt 13:36).
He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.”
Matthew 13:37-39
Jesus has now explained all the referents:
kingdom of heaven
→
this scenario of events
farmer
→
Son of Man = Jesus
field
→
world
good seed ≈ wheat
→
people of kingdom
weeds
→
people of evil one
stealthy enemy
→
devil
Pay particular attention to the field—what is it? Jesus says it’s the world, and this “field” boasts two crops which are growing side by side—the “people of the kingdom” and “people of the evil one.” This battlespace is simple—two opposing kingdoms, each with its own commanding officer, each with its own followers, inhabiting the same territory. This war will resolve when the “harvesters” arrive, whom Jesus identifies as angels.
He explains:
As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
Matthew 13:36-43
This “field” that is our world will remain a mess until “the end of the age.” The harvesters will fix the field when Jesus sends them. But notice that Jesus now calls the “field” the “kingdom”—He says the angels “will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.” The field is both the world and the kingdom. This suggests Jesus sees the world—this present battlespace—as transitioning into His kingdom at the decisive moment in the future when He intervenes. It’s as if “this world” is the territory at issue throughout history, and Jesus views it as already His, and judgment is (in part) Him sweeping evil out of His lands forever.
“Then,” He promises, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Why? Because the “weeds” will be gone, and the “wheat” will finally be free to flourish in the field (i.e., “the kingdom of their Father”) without an invasive species choking them.
Jesus’ kingdom is here, right now. It’s in this world in the form of a dispersed community in exile (see no. 3-4, below) in a hostile land.[2] This situation will remain that way until the end of the age (cf. the parable of the net at Mt 13:47-50)—it’s why Jesus said this whole parable, the entire state of affairs it sketched, “is like” the kingdom of heaven. As one early Christian discipleship manual said, “There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways.”[3]
3. The world as the battlespace for the two kingdoms at war
This is a sketch of the battlespace we’ve occupied from the Fall to the present. This is the foundation for considering the vexing issue of church v. state. There is a kingdom of darkness called Babylon. There is also a kingdom belonging to God which the Apostle Paul refers to as “the Jerusalem that is above” (Gal 4:26; cf. Rev 21:2). These two kingdoms are the cultures, values, and societies corresponding to two quite different masters—Satan and God. Viewed the right way, we can frame the big picture of history as the story of these two kingdoms in supernatural conflict.
Babylon will lose. Jerusalem will win, and then (and only then) …
… with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
Isaiah 11:4-5
From this fountainhead, other principles logically follow. We’ll turn to these in the next articles.
[1] “A story, picture, etc., which uses symbols to convey a hidden or ulterior meaning, typically a moral or political one; a symbolic representation; an extended or continued metaphor,” (s.v. “allegory,” noun, no. 2, OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/5230?rskey=ts99zo&result=1&isAdvanced=false (accessed May 05, 2023)).
[2] For an argument for the “already, but not yet” aspect of the kingdom, see Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, trans. H. de Jongste (Phillipsburg: P&R, 1962), esp. §IV. Many Americans often turn to George Ladd when they think of “already, but not yet,” but Ridderbos published first.
For dispensationalist rejoinders to the idea of kingdom being present now, see esp. (1) Chafer, Systematic, pp. 5:333-358; 7:223-224, and (2) Alva McClain, The Greatness of the Kingdom: An Inductive Study of the Kingdom of God (reprint; Winona Lake: BMH, 2009).
[3] “Didache”1.1, in The Apostolic Fathers in English, trans. Rick Brannan (Bellingham: Lexham, 2012).
This essay (seethe series) aims to help ordinary Christians rightly consider the relationship between the church and the state. This is important because Christians receive many contradictory messages about this issue. Some Christian influencers call for believers to “take America back for God.” Others just want good, old-fashioned Christian values to influence society, and they feel marginalized because Mayberry is gone and isn’t coming back. Still others just want the church to have nothing to do with politics—perhaps to the extent that their churches neglect to speak truth to a decadent culture.
So, there’s good reason to consider the “church v. state” issue with some fresh eyes—to go back to basics. I won’t address everything about this large topic, but I hope to establish a foundation for thinking about this issue the right way. This essay consists of six articles, of which this is the first.
In this introductory article I’ll sketch two paradigm shifts which impact any discussion along this line from an American context, introduce three common operating environments in which churches often operate, and provide a preview of this essay’s conclusions. Then, I’ll spend the bulk of the essay discussing five foundational principles that will help us work through the “church v. state” issue. I labored to ground these principles firmly in the biblical storyline, rather than in creeds, confessions, or political theology. This doesn’t mean I don’t value tradition; it just means first principles on important issues ought to be explicitly or implicitly scriptural.
Paradigm shift no. 1—the death of “Christendom” and the like
In the 20 centuries (and counting) since Jesus’ first advent, Christians in the West have often operated in an environment that assumed a church and state nexus. Since the time of Constantine, the church had presumed it would have the support of the state and of the culture around it. The tremors of the Enlightenment cracked this wide open.
But, even after this earthquake, the church still occupied a position of unquestioned influence and status in many nations—a defacto Christian-ish ethos pervaded. For example, as late as 1952 the National Council of Churches launched a $500,000 advertising blitz to promote the Revised Standard Version translation of the bible and publicly presented President Harry Truman with his own copy[1]—this is unthinkable in 2023.
Figure 1. Excerpt from Peter Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures (New York: OUP, 1999), p. 70.
This situation began to change rapidly in the mid-20th century, when for perhaps the first time in its history the church in the Western world began to grapple with how to understand its role vis-à-vis the state as a minority community in a self-consciously secular world.[2] Some flavors of the American church have long responded to this with a defensive impulse which stems from its memory of a different time, when “while the state was not officially Christian, society seemed to promote values that were deemed essentially Christian.”[3] Whether this idyllic reality existed at meaningful scale outside of 1950s television sets is open to question.[4] However, that era is gone, secularism is here, the church has a minority status, and one theologian aptly likened this new world to an airplane flying blind without instruments, not knowing where it is or where it’s going.[5]
Certain American believers sometimes react by trying to re-Christianize society on a superficial level—to recapture a largely imaginary lost glory. One Christian historian described Victorian-era America as having “a veneer of evangelical Sunday-school piety” that amounted to “a dime-store millennium.”[6] It’s still common to hear older believers complain about the demise of compulsory prayer and bible reading in public schools. This ghost of a so-called “Christian nation” is a monkey some flavors of the American church have trouble shaking off its back—it often lurks in the background in the guise of a Christian-ish American exceptionalism or super-patriotism.
Paradigm shift no. 2—Christianity shifts to the global south
The second paradigm shift for the church v. state issue is that many, many Christians now live in an environment that never knew Christianity as a civil religion[7] and are not handicapped by that cultural memory. Over the past 120 years, Christianity has at last become a truly global phenomenon. For many centuries, since the Arab conquest of the Mediterranean basin in the early 7th century, Christianity had been largely a Western religion.[8] But, as one church historian has noted, the period between 1815 to 1914 (the great age of missions) “constituted the greatest century which Christianity had thus far known.”[9] This missions movement produced a church that is now global and no longer beholden to the patronage of Western benefactors. These so-called “younger churches” are hungry, energetic, and often far outpace the enthusiasm and vitality of their Western “parents.”
There were now new centers in every continent, resulting in a map of Christianity that, rather than seeing it as having its base in the West, and from there expanding outward, sees Christianity as a polycentric reality, where many areas that had earlier been peripheral have become new centers … the new map of Christianity does not have one center, but many. Financial resources are still concentrated in the North Atlantic, as are educational and other institutions. But, theological creativity is no longer limited to that area.[10]
Indeed, most Christians now live nowhere near Europe or North America.
In 1900, 82% of Christians lived in the North. By 2020 this figure had dropped dramatically to just 33% … The future of World Christianity is largely in the hands of Christians in the global South, where most Christians practice very different kinds of the faith compared to those in the North. Christianity has shifted from a tradition that was once majority global North to one that is majority global South.[11]
Many of these Christians did not grow up in a “Christianized” culture, and so their thinking of the church and the state isn’t colored by sepia-toned memories of a bygone age. We can learn from these brothers and sisters and better appreciate the limitations of our own situation. So, for example, when an Argentine theologian critiques the culture Christianity of the “American Way of Life,” the American church ought to listen to its brother:
Christian salvation is, among other things, liberation from the world as a closed system, from the world that has room only for a God bound by sociology, from the “consistent” world that rules out God’s free, unpredictable action … The gospel, then, is a call not only to faith but also to repentance, to a break with the world. And it is only in the extent to which we are free from this world that we are able to serve our fellow men.[12]
This is a call to, among other things, divorce oneself from secular values and allegiances—including political ones. Perhaps because the author doesn’t come from a context where Christianity has been a civil religion, he can read the New Testament without explicitly or unwittingly conflating church and state—and that makes him (and others) worth listening to.
Three common operating environments for the church
Broadly speaking, churches operate in one of these three operating environments:
Church in alliance with the state. In this arrangement the church and the state are generally bound together. Legislation and public policy will allegedly be informed by purportedly Christian values. This can take various forms. Theonomy envisions the church as the state (basically a theocracy);[13] the populist rhetoric from what is sometimes misleadingly labeled as “Christian nationalism” is downstream from some aspects of this theory. Constantinianism refers to the state controlling the church—when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to faith he made Christianity the state religion and presided over councils about Christian doctrine as both the head of state and as the alleged head of the church. In Western Europe, many nations still retain the emaciated shell of a state church—even though that influence is now largely symbolic. Or, in a softer version of the same, varieties of American exceptionalism[14] advocate for America’s special role in God’s providence and its resulting obligation to honor God in all it does, or at least America’s role as “a communal paragon of justice, freedom, and equality.”
Pluralism. This is also known as a “free church in a free state.” The idea is that government’s role is to preserve law and order and provide freedom for citizens to pursue their own religious path or none at all. The state is more of a neutral arbiter or policeman who keeps order.[15] The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution embodies this ethos in its “free exercise” and “establishment” clauses—the government cannot establish a religion or prohibit its free exercise.[16] The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights also reflects this perspective.[17] Baptist churches which understand their heritage (and not all do) have always been champions of this ethos.
Isolation. In its milder forms, this means Christians create their own alternative subcultures for reality (think about the movie The Village). Or, it can mean a church deliberately never speaks of “political issues” and chooses to not teach believers how to engage these topics as responsible citizens. Or, in perhaps its most extreme form, it can take the form of monasticism.[18]
Many Americans Christians of a certain age and subculture are probably most comfortable with some version of American exceptionalism. On the other hand, some Christians are sick of it all and don’t want any hint of “politics” in the church. Other Christians believe church and state ought to stay separate, each minding their own business—their interests may overlap but their roles and functions are different.[19] Still others are theonomists who want a Christian America. Even more aren’t quite sure what they want and are falling prey to populist, bastardized variations of theonomy-ish talk from right-wing politicians who may or may not actually believe what they say.
What do the scriptures say? Do they provide a way out of this confusing maze?
Five principles—a preview of coming attractions
Here are a preview of the five foundational principles that I believe provide a solid, biblical basis for considering the “church v. state” question. These come from an unapologetically Baptist milieu, and some readers will spot this fairly quickly. Here they are, with a brief description.
There are two kingdoms, Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon will lose. This is the most fundamental truth about human history, the biblical story, and reality.
God’s kingdom is distinct from every nation state. If we conflate America (or any nation) with the kingdom, we’re making a terrible mistake. “The church is the community of God’s people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology.”[20]
A Christian’s core identity is as a child of God and a kingdom citizen, and so her principal allegiance must be to God’s kingdom (“Jerusalem”) and not to a nation state. If you’re a Christian, then God doesn’t much care that you’re an American. You now have a kingdom passport, kingdom citizenship, and a kingdom mandate. To the extent our most basic identity is rooted in America rather than God’s kingdom, then we are traitors.
The church’s job is to be a kingdom embassy; a subversive and countercultural society calling outsiders to defect from Babylon and pledge allegiance to Jerusalem. “We argue that the political task of Christians is to be the church rather than to transform the world … The church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief.”[21]
Set apart, yet not isolated. The analogy of “church v. state” compared to “home v. work” is helpful. Christians must approach political and social issues as self-conscious outsiders with a kingdom agenda—to tell God’s truth to Babylon. A pluralist operating environment is the best operating environment for a local church.
I hope this brief sketch of the church v. state issue is helpful for you and provides a sure foundation for considering a question that will only get trickier in the coming years. Future articles in this series will discuss each of these five principles in detail.
[1] Peter Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures (New York: OUP, 1999), pp. 4, 90.
[2] This is an important caveat, because the long Baptist struggle for religious liberty took place within a Christian-ish milieu. What I’m referring to is the church as a minority community in an overtly secular world.
[3] Justo Gonzalez, Christian Thought Revisited: Three Types of Theology, rev ed. (New York: Orbis, 1999), p. 128.
[4] See especially David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993), ch. 34.
[5] See Carl F.H. Henry, Toward a Recovery of Christian Belief (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990), ch. 1.
[6] George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991) p. 10.
[7] A civil religion is “a religion, or a secular tradition likened to a religion, which serves (officially or unofficially) as a basis for national identity and civic life,” (s.v. “civil,” see s.v. under “compounds,” OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/33575?redirectedFrom=civil+religion (accessed May 08, 2023)). I’m distinguishing this from “Christendom” in which an alleged Christianity has an external and superficial role as a traditional religion (s.v. “christendom,” noun, no. 3c, OED Online. March 2023. Oxford University Press. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/32437?redirectedFrom=christendom (accessed May 09, 2023). For example, many Latin American countries have a “Christendom” background because of their Roman Catholic heritage, but it’s not necessarily a basis for national identity or civic life—read the Latin American liberation theologians.
[8] Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, vol. 1, rev. ed. (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2010), pp. 288-294. See also Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christianity, vol. 1, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 286-291.
[9] Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christianity, vol. 2, revised ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 1063.
[10] Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, vol. 2, revised ed. (San Francisco: Harper One, 2010), pp. 525, 526.
[11] Gina Zurlo, Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022), pp. 3-4.
[12] Rene Padilla, Mission Between the Times: Essays on the Kingdom, revised ed. (Carlisle: Langham, 2010), p. 42; emphasis in original. This essay is the presentation Padilla gave at the 1974 Lausanne Conference.
[13] On “theocracy,” I mean “[d]omination of the civil power by the ecclesiastical,” (John MacQuarrie, s.v. “theocracy,” in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, ed(s). James Childress and John MacQuarrie (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1986), p. 622).
On theonomy, see Rousas Rushdoony, Christianity and the State (Vallecito: Chalcedon, 1986). “A Christian theology of the state must challenge the state’s claims of sovereignty or lordship. Only Jesus Christ is lord or sovereign, and the state makes a Molech of itself when it claims sovereignty (Lev. 20:1-5). The church of the twentieth century must be roused out of its polytheism and surrender. The crown rights of Christ the King must be proclaimed,” (p. 10). Emphasis added. Theonomists often insist they do not endorse sacralism and want God-ordained institutions to remain in their own spheres of authority. Yet, one of the church’s jobs is to insist that “every sphere of life [including the government] must be under the rule of God’s word and under the authority of Christ the King,” (Christianity and the State, p. 9). Thus, they would argue this is not a church and state alliance at all. I believe this is a distinction without a meaningful difference.
[14] I’m drawing from John Wilsey’s discussions of “closed” and “open” American exceptionalism, respectively (American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of an Idea (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015), pp. 18-19).
[15] See especially Raymond Plant, s.v. “pluralism,” in Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, pp. 480-481.
[16] For a trustworthy, plain language discussion of the historical context and legal interpretation of the religion clauses, see Congressional Research Service, “First Amendment Fundamental Freedoms,” in Constitution Annotated, https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-1/ (accessed 08 May 2023).
[17] Article 18: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights.
[18] On monasticism, see Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christianity, vol. 1 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 221-235.
[19] “Church and State might in a perfect society coalesce into one; but meantime their functions must be kept separate,” (Edgar Y. Mullins, The Axioms of Religion (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1908), p. 195).
The president of Southern Seminary is on record as saying that government funding for religious schools is wrong, that Baptists “consistently oppose” the public reading of Scripture in public schools, and he even agonized over whether it would “subsidize religion” for churches to be tax-exempt.[1] This president is not Al Mohler, but his predecessor Edgar Mullins, writing in 1908. Some religious outsiders (and perhaps not a few Baptists) would be surprised to learn this. Yet, Mullins was no maverick—so why do his views seem so out of step with evangelical political discourse today?
Broadly speaking, church and state relations can be framed as four choices:[2]
Theocracy. The church controls the State. For example, Rousas Rushdoony, an architect of Christian Reconstructionism, believed the Great Commission was about the church’s mandate to remake society. He declared that focus on salvation of souls at the expense of this mandate was “heretical.”[3]
Constantianism. The State favors the church, which in turn accommodates itself to the government. This is a quid pro quo partnership.
Free church in a free state. Government leaves people alone to worship (or not) as they wish, and the church supports that aim so all can freely choose their own path—without implicit or explicit State sanction.
Isolation. Christians withdraw. They watch their own movies, listen to their own music, go to their own clubs, and effectively segregate themselves from society, culture, and the wider world.
The third path is the historic Baptist position, and it is the one Mullins represented. This is a framework that can bring clarity in polarized times—and, as a bonus, it is enshrined in the 1st Amendment. The position is simple, and one can appreciate it regardless of its sectarian origins:
Each person is responsible for her own relationship with God,
In order to be responsible, each person must be free to make her own choice,
So, the best model for church and state relations is “a free church in a free state.”
Salvation is an individual affair. Jesus calls individuals to “repent and believe,” (Mark 1:15). The Apostle Paul tells believers to put away their old selves, and “put on” their new status as God’s children (Ephesians 4:22-23). The Scriptures speak of individual judgment (1 Corinthians 3:12-15; Revelation 20:11-15). That being the case, choosing God—loving Him with everything you have (cf. Deuteronomy 6:5; Mark 12:28-31)—cannot be based on implicit or explicit coercion. It must be a free choice, an intelligent and willful decision. You cannot force love in a marriage, nor can you compel love for Christ. God is interested in our hearts, which must be freely given. As one early Baptist wrote, “You may force men to church against their consciences, but they will believe as they did afore.”[4]
If all this is true, then it suggests Christians ought to support “a free church in a free state.” The two pillars of this position are codified in the 1st Amendment as the “free exercise” and the “establishment” clauses:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …
Essentially, these two pillars say (1) government will not establish a religion, nor will it (2) prohibit people from freely exercising their religious beliefs. As Christians today survey the evangelical landscape and wonder what to think about the intersection of church and politics, the Baptist ethos is one worth considering. Here are some questions to make this less abstract—consider them in the context of “a free church in a free state,” and the “free exercise” and “establishment” principles.
Should Christians support compulsory Christian prayer in public schools? This practice would compel all students to pray in a Christian manner, regardless of their own beliefs. This is coercion. It also violates the establishment clause. This is why Engel v. Vitale (370 U.S. 421 (1962)) went the way it did—not because “secularists” were on the march, but on principle.
Ought a nativity scene be displayed on public property? Would this be favoring Christianity? What should you think if someone says, “This is a Christian nation, and while other faiths can worship as they wish, the nativity scene must go up!” If government cannot “establish” religion, then what is the solution, here?
May a football coach employed by a public school be fired for engaging in prayer on a football field after a game? The Bremerton, WA school district thought this violated the establishment clause. The Supreme disagreed (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. ___ (2022)).
More examples could be given. The “free church in a free state” framework is a flexible model that eschews government coercion in matters of faith, while safeguarding a person’s right to exercise that faith. Government has struggled to fairly implement this framework in the messiness of real life; at times favoring accommodationist or separationist views to solve the muddle.[5]
The point is that there is no theocracy. There is also no church and State quid pro quo partnership. Nor is there a need to withdraw from public life and embrace isolationism. There are only houses of faith being asked to be left alone, declining special treatment, not lobbying for “access” and “power,” not pushing for an explicit or implicit establishment of Christianity—because one day the shoe may be on the other foot. It can do this because the church’s job is not to underwrite American democracy, but to be a counter-cultural community of “foreigners” waiting for the better tomorrow, witnessing for Christ and the Gospel.[6] To be this alternative community, the church must demand to be left alone—not cry out for special favors or long for sepia-toned nostalgia of a bygone de facto Christendom. This is what Howard Snyder called the “countersystem” or “subversive” model,[7] wherein the church is a community summoning people to leave the secular city and join a new society.
Thinking citizens cannot escape this sectarian discussion, because the post-Trump GOP is suffused with populist derivatives of Christian Reconstructionism. Those unfamiliar with the broader stream of Christian theology may assume Reconstructionism is Christianity. Indeed, the “free church in a free state” ethos has fallen on hard times in public discourse—especially at the hands of leaders who know better. Much of the popular uproar in evangelical circles about “losing our country” is because America has been disestablishing Christianity as its de facto civil religion for at least the past two generations.
This framework is sometimes dismissed as utopian or naïve. Somebody’s values will be legislated, why not make sure they are Christian values? There are good books which flesh out the framework I can only sketch here.[8] Suffice it to say that God’s community is not the State; “Church and State might in a perfect society coalesce into one; but meantime their functions must be kept separate.”[9] As one theologian observed, “the church is a colony, an island of one culture in the middle of another.”[10] Resident aliens never mistake a foreign country as their own.
For healthy civic discourse, to ensure a decision for Christ is freely made (whichever way it may go), so the church can be the church, and for a measure of sane pluralism in an insane world—both Christians and concerned citizens should champion the “free church in a free state” ethos.
[1] Edgar Y. Mullins, The Axioms of Religion (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1908), pp. 197-200.
[2] There are many helpful ways to frame this issue—this is merely one of them.
[3] Rousas J. Rushdoony, Christianity and the State (Vallecito: Chalcedon, 1986), pp. 19, 35.
[4] Leonard Busher, “Religion’s Peace, 1614,” from H. Leon McBeth, A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage (Nashville, TN: B&H, 1990), p. 73.
[5] Take the example of a nativity scene at the county courthouse. A separationist ethic would ban all religious displays at Christmas. An accommodationist view would allow any group to put up any display it wants at Christmas.
[6] See Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon, Resident Aliens, expended ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2014), ch. 2.
[7] Howard Snyder, Models of the Kingdom (Nashville: Abingdon, 1991), pp. 77-85.
[8] See especially Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens.
I’m reading through a little book Carl Henry wrote during the Reagan years, titled The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society. He writes something here that I felt I must share. It’s about the relationship between the Church and the State. Henry suggests that the church’s job is about more than personal evangelism. Like an occupying army, he suggests the church is to be “light and salt in a darkening and decaying society,” (p. 39). He then writes this (p. 40):
Speaking as a Baptist, should we do as Henry suggests? Should we “insist” on applying Christian ethical absolutes to national life? What is disturbing is that Henry suggests pluralism is a sham. It’s true that somebody’s values will be advanced in any piece of legislation, policy, or administrative rule. It’s also true that a key mark of the Baptist ethos is that we wish government to leave everyone alone so we can all worship as we see fit, without interference or sanction. Baptists believe this because any coercion, any outward pressure, any legal compulsion to “make” someone a Christian is both (1) a waste of time, because it won’t work, and (2) spiritual abuse. So, Baptists have not historically sought or wanted State sanction for religious activities.
Henry was a Baptist. That makes his negative remarks about pluralism (and more recent culture war moves by more modern Baptists) so puzzling. Baptists should not desire State sanction or approval for any religious speech or act, because this would implicitly or explicitly force other faith groups to accept Christian moral values. Baptists recognize that the precedent of State sanction might smile on Christians today, but what about tomorrow? We’re all for State-sponsored approval as long as it favors us. But, what if it doesn’t?
Henry continues:
Henry has doubled down. While I admit I’m not sure how to square (1) my Baptist convictions against State sanction for religion in any form, with (2) my desire to see Christ’s values advocated for in the public square, I insist that Henry’s comments here are not Baptistic in the slightest. His reasoning appears to go like this:
This country was founded on Christian principles
and it ain’t very Christian anymore
so we gotta advocate for Christianity in our national life as part of our Gospel mission
This is incorrect. However, it’s complicated. Behold the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
You can’t establish a religion, can’t prohibit exercise of religion, and you can’t stop public religious speech. So much is clear. But, it’s also true that the Constitution (and its Amendments) came about in a Christian-ish milieu. The Constitution Annotated, the official “living” government publication providing context for the origin and interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, notes this:
Probablyat the time of the adoption of the constitution and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.8 The object, then, of the religion clauses in this view was not to prevent general governmental encouragement of religion, of Christianity, but to prevent religious persecution and to prevent a national establishment
So, it’s apparent that while America did not have an official State church, its implicit atmosphere was broadly Christian. We can see, then, why Carl Henry and others frame the Church/State relationship the way they do. Are they wrong to do so?
I fear they are indeed wrong. This does not mean I believe Christians should withdraw from society and ignore the moral problems of the day. It also does not mean Christians ought to wed themselves to a particular party, like so many barnacles to a ship. But, these are topics for another time.
I can say, however, that I don’t believe Henry’s approach here can be called Baptist.
Fade in on the little town of Bomont, presumably in rural Illinois. At a pulpit in a small local church is the Reverend Shaw Moore. He’s fond of crazed pastoral rants against dancing. You may recognize him—he’s the angry pastor-dad from Footloose.
There are still some Reverend Shaw’s around—less than there used to be, but still plenty everywhere. He epitomizes the wrong way to think about the sexual and gender confusion in our society.
What should Christians think about Pride Month?
This article is not about “why it’s wrong.” It’s not a list of “unstoppable” answers to “destroy” the opposition. Instead, it’s a proposal for a better way to think about these issues. It proceeds in five stages:
A snapshot of reality in 2022—a quick assessment for the church
Stories or scripts … and you
The LGBTQ script
The Christian script
What should Christians think about Pride Month?
Where We Are—A Frank Assessment of Reality in 2022
I’ll share three snapshots of the reality of life in the West, in 2022. These are not crazed stories from dark corners on the web. They’re from mainstream news outlets:
Trans people are … cathedrals?
The first anecdote is a short video from Middle Church, in New York City. This church has a pastor on staff who boasts in his bio that he won the seminary drag contest. The video’s thesis is that “trans people are cathedrals.”[2] Like cathedrals, trans people are always in flux, always being remodeled, expanded, contracted—being restored. And like cathedrals, the narrator intones, trans bodies are sacred, holy spaces.
Sarah and Dickie
In Dusseldorf, there lives a 23-year-old woman named Sarah Rodo, who wishes to marry her toy Boeing 737, which she’s named “Dicki” (for reasons about which I dare not speculate).[3] One news article features Sarah clad in lingerie, bathed in a deep red light, cradling Dickie in her arms. The caption notes, “Sarah says she is particularly attracted to Dicki’s face, wings and engine.”[4]
Sweet Miku
Thirdly, I present a Japanese man who has married a plush doll depicting a fictional anime character:[5]
… life with Miku, he argues, has advantages over being with a human partner: She’s always there for him, she’ll never betray him, and he’ll never have to see her get ill or die. Mr. Kondo sees himself as part of a growing movement of people who identify as ‘fictosexuals.’
What does this reality mean?
It means people increasingly have no idea what Christianity is or what it means—it’s parallel to us recoiling at Sarah and poor Dickie! And, because nothing is more personal than sex or felt identity, this means there will only be increasing confusion and anger at Christians as we oppose the sexual redefinitions entrenched in our society. So, we need to explain the Christian story to them like they know and understand nothing—because they probably don’t. We need more than, “Jesus loves you, and has a wonderful plan for your life.” That means nothing to many people, today.
If that is the case, then I suggest three wrong approaches that will likely have to die, especially regarding sexual ethics, because of this reality:
First: a retail (“come to me”) evangelism model is weak, and it always has been.
The “if we have the event at the church building, they will come!” mindset needs to die. If you are in the rural or semi-urban Midwest or South, this may not apply.
Second, the death of the confrontational model.
Because of the cultural disconnect between Christ and culture, “one off” evangelistic encounters are likely not enough by themselves to be successful[6]—the “gap” is too much! Could one conversation with Sarah (the plane girl) convince you to initiate a sexual relationship with a toy plane? That’s the “gap” you’re dealing with, in some cases. This gap will only grow!
Salvation is a cultivating process[7] (e.g. parable of the sower, Mt 13:3-8—see also the Rainer model[8]), so relationships and roles are important. When you have a relationship with people, you earn the right to speak truth. In this cultivation cycle, you don’t always know your role—you’re likely a waystation on the person’s spiritual trajectory.
Third, lots of law, but little or no grace.
This is Rev Shaw’s way. The vibe is not evangelism, but disgust and distance. You change your statement of faith to “keep the gays away.” You amend your by-laws so “they” can’t “force you” to use your church building in a way you disapprove. The goal is isolation from “those people.” This is the default model in many traditional churches—usually led by older pastors from a different era
So, we need something more—we need to “tell the better story.” Accordingly, there are at least two wrong attitudes that achieve nothing that we ought to throw overboard:
First, don’t be full of anger and outrage.
This common attitude is directly opposite to what the parable of the weeds and the wheat tell us (Mt 13:24ff).[9] In that parable, the field is the world. Jesus likens the kingdom situation to this world. What’s the situation? The world is a mess—a mixed bag. Good wheat is intermingled with the weeds. The kingdom’s servants ask whether they ought to go pull the weeds up. Jesus says no—wait until the end, and the angels will harvest the field appropriately. Until then, this world will remain a mess.
This false model assumes:
The world should be a pure world—a Christian world,
But, it ain’t like that,
So, that makes us mad,
So, we wage a crusade to “take America back” for God.
This is a lie. The true model, from the parable, is that this world is and will remain very messy. So, sexual and gender confusion reign. Big surprise! The second wrong attitude is just as deadly:
Second, don’t be warm Jello.
In our quest to “listen,” we forget God really does have something to say about sexual ethics—and has a message of liberation from wrong ideas and desires.
What’s Your Story?
Everyone has a “story” or a “script” that shapes their view of the world. The filter thru which they interpret things, understand themselves, and their place and role in the world. It answers the “big questions” of life. This “script” also answers more immediate, practical questions:
Who do I love?
Who can I love?
What is a man?
What is a woman?
How do I know who am I?
What’s expected of me and how do I live up to it?
So, the Japanese guy who married a doll has a story.
Sarah Rodo, the plane girl, has a story.
People confused by their gender have a story.
People confused about their sexual feelings have a story.
You may not like it or understand it, but they each have a script that they’ve made up or adopted that makes their choices “make sense” to them and gives them an identity.
Mark Yarhouse, a Christian psychologist out of Wheaton College who specializes in sexual and gender issues, identifies three stages for identity:[10]
Dilemma. My experiences and feelings are not what’s “normal” or “expected.”
Development. The business of finding, sorting, and weighing answers to these dilemmas.
Synthesis. Your solution to the problem—you figure out “who you are” and come to some conclusions.
How you sort all this out depends on what “script” or “story” you find most persuasive about life. Like actors with their scripts for their roles, our “script” gives us our cues, tells us our lines, and lets us know what’s expected of us—“this is your part, this is your role, and this is how we expect you to play it.”
For example, in some generic flavors of American culture today:
A 19-year-old boy can’t come back to live at home, because that would make him a loser. But, a girl of the same age can come home without stigma.
A man who sleeps around is a hero, but a woman who does the same is morally bankrupt.
A man “should” like hunting, fishing, shooting guns, and grilling. A woman “should” like Hobby Lobby, journaling, and Lifetime movies.
None of these are biblically mandated, but they’re real, they’re out there, and they’re “the script” many of us accept as “the way things are.” We learned the script at home, at school, from friends, from family, from experience. They’re baked into everything. The key tell is that these scripts are more felt or implied, than explained.
We have “lines” for sexual feelings + gender, too—but what if these roles don’t fit you very well? Someone’s gonna hand them a new script, a different script—one that claims to “explain” their feelings. It’ll either be the world’s script—the LGBTQ script—or it’ll be Christ’s script. Or it’ll be both. But someone’s gonna hand them a script.
The LGBTQ community has a script to hand to confused people.[12] I present to you the Gingerbread Person:
Here’s a precis of the LGTBQ script:
Your feelings are natural, good, and healthy.
You need to discover “who you are,” and working out your true “gender identity”[13] is the key to your self-discovery.
Your sexual attractions and/or inner feelings about your gender are the core of who you are as a person—it’s your identity!
So, your sexual behavior and/or gender expression is the fruit of your identity.
The only way you can be “true to yourself” is to live out that identity before the world
This is a very powerful script. If you’re a confused 15-year-old girl, what do you think she’ll find more compelling?
Embrace sexual attractions or inner feelings to “discover who you really are?”
Or, a guy with a “Footloose preacher” vibe: “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!”
The Better Story
Taking a strictly defensive “Alamo approach”[14] is the wrong way to respond. This includes (but is not limited to) sermons from Leviticus, amendments to the doctrinal statement to “protect” the church, and anger and rage a la Rev. Shaw.
The right way is to tell a different story; a better story! Identity is not about feelings as the pathway to self-discovery, but a choice about love and loyalty—will you follow your feelings or will you follow God?
What does God’s story say about identity? The best synopsis is from 1 Peter 2:9-11:
You can be a part of something infinitely larger than yourself.
Part of a chosen people.
Part a royal priesthood to show and tell God’s story of love to the world.
A citizen of a holy nation—one that transcends any nationalist loyalties from the here and now.
Part of God’s special possession to tell about His mercy and love.
God came to rescue us from ourselves, give us a new name, a new family, a new heart, a new mind, and a better tomorrow. This identity is part of a story:
God is making a community,
thru Jesus the King,
for His coming kingdom
You think the bible’s story is about salvation? Covenant? Kingdom? Promise? No—all these are waypoints in aid of something fundamentally simpler—a community, a restoration of the fellowship we were made to have with God and with each other.
This story has at least three plot moves:
Creation. God made everything, and He made it good.
Fall. Our first parents ruined it all, when Satan deceived them.
Rescue. God’s plan to fix the mess, thru Jesus the King.
What place does Jesus offer us in this story?
Identity—join me!
Peace—reconciliation!
Purpose—to be royal priests!
Renovation—to remodel our hearts and minds to mirror His!
Tell the Better Story
Think with me, now—isn’t this such a different story than the LGBTQ script? Isn’t it such a better response than to only circle the wagons and preach angry sermons from Leviticus 18?
There is a concept in military strategy called “peer competitor,” which refers to an evenly matched geo-political foe. For example, China is a near peer competitor with the USA and some believe they will likely outmatch us within one or two generations.
The Footloose preacher is not a peer competitor to the LGBTQ script. He’s a babe in the woods, ranting at the sky—an artifact from very different era. He isn’t interested in telling the better story—only in the “purity” of his tribe.
But, the Christian story is more than a “peer competitor” to the LGBTQ script. It’s an alternative story—a better story. So, churches and their people must tell that story, persuade, make people think, beg them to see Jesus and His love.
We must give people real answers to real questions about a sexual or gender script that don’t feel they fit into very well. Basically, we need to tell the better story—the Gospel story.
For the sermon from this material, you can find the audio version here:
“Cathedrals are trans bodies—beautiful and holy in every inch and in every moment of existence. They are beautiful and holy when they are first built, and beautiful when they are altered and edited, and they are beautiful and holy in the midst of that change. Even engulfed in scaffolding, even in the midst of a collapse. And their holiness and beauty is reflected in the lives of trans people—who do not only mimic the form of Christ on the cross but contain in their bodies the holiness of creation”
[6] “Many Christians learned a mechanical, aggressive approach to evangelism. We attended workshops and read books based on techniques developed by people who have the gift of evangelism. That is the problem. When those of us who are not gifted evangelists muster up the courage to try these techniques, the results are usually disappointing—which makes us feel guilty and often offends others. We begin to think of ourselves as substandard disciples who are simply not able to share our faith. Although we want to see friends and colleagues come to Christ, we stop trying out of fear and frustration.
The problem is one of perspective, not inability. We tend to think of evangelism as an event, a point in time when we explain the gospel message and individuals put their faith in Jesus on the spot. Done!” (Bill Peel and Walt Larrimore, Workplace Grace: Becoming a Spiritual Influence at Work (Longview: LeTourneau Press, 2014; Kindle ed.), KL 196).
[8] Thom S. Rainer, The Unchurched Next Door: Understanding Faith Stages as Keys to Sharing Your Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003; Kindle ed.), KL 863.
This world is a mess. A few decades ago, Carl F.H. Henry wrote: “The West has lost its moral and epistemic compass bearings. It has no shared criterion for judging whether human beings are moving up or down, standing still, or merely on the move only God knows where.”[1] In the absence of a Biblical world-explanation, Henry argued, “[t]he search for an alternative model is beset with confusion, and Western society drifts indecisively toward chaos. Secular scholars seem unable to tell us where we are.”[2]
This is surely correct, even if (32 years hence) it prompts an eye roll and a muttered, “yeah, no kidding!” from the reader. My burden is to suggest what local churches ought to think about this situation—what we ought to do about it, what our posture towards this world ought to be.
First, I’ll define “culture” so we begin on the same page. Second, I’ll sketch[3] three helpful paradigms. The first is from the 1950s, the second from 1994, and the third from 2006. Each tries to answer this same question, in its own context. Each is inspired by the first. Finally, I’ll sketch out my own approach and confess with which paradigm my sympathies lie.
What is Culture?
The term “culture” means the distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviors, and way of life for a particular nation or people.[4] H. Richard Niebuhr suggests “culture” is a synonym for “civilization” or what biblical writers called “the world.”[5] In turn, the definition of “civilization” brings us back round to where we began: “the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area.”[6]
Niebuhr—Christ and Culture
H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous book began life as a series of lectures in which he sought to consider the “double wrestle of the church with its Lord and with the cultural society with which it lives in symbiosis …”[7] Niebuhr’s writing sparkles with an academic vibe. He doesn’t write as a churchman confronting urgent problems, but as a scholar reclining in his armchair, puffing on his pipe, staring into an ethereal distance. There’s nothing wrong with academics, of course—I only mean that his discussion is dispassionate and abstract.
He lays out a five-fold taxonomy of how the church ought to relate to culture:
Christ against culture. The church is always in opposition. There is a war footing. Christ is opposed to this world, its culture, and He calls us to come out from the world and be separate.[8]
Christ of culture. He guides civilization to its utopian goal of brotherhood and value. Christ “confirms what is best in the past, and guides the process of civilization to its proper goal.”[9] There is no antagonism.
Christ above culture. Only thru salvation will Christ lead us to utopia.[10]
Christ andculture in paradox. We must obey both authorities in this life while we endure and wait for Jesus. There is duality and tension here that is admittedly a bit schizophrenic—many people are likely here.[11]
Christ transforms culture. This is a conversionist position. Jesus is a leaven that works on society from inside out, spearheading the Gospel all about.[12] There is a positive view of culture—”a sort of Jesus will fix it now” feel.[13]
Bloesch—Responding to Reality
Donald Bloesch was a longtime professor of systematic theology at Dubuque Theological Seminary, in Iowa. In the inaugural tome of his seven-volume systematic, he described four possible responses to modernity.[14] His approach is practical, more “real,” and less theoretical than Niebuhr’s. He is less discussing a theory of Christ v. culture, and more describing how Christians choose to respond to the world as it is.
Here is Boesch’s typology, with some free paraphrasing from me. Not each response will contain all the traits, but the “feel” will be familiar:
Restoration. There is a more insular focus on “rebuilding the walls” of the church. A “clear and hold” the line against the world ethos. A Christian counterculture mindset may produce a ghettoized outlook. There is impatience with dialogue with “the enemy.” Apologetics is largely defensive, to assure insiders they have “the truth.” There may be a scholastic fidelity to creeds, and a sectarian emphasis on the purity of a particular church. Empirical rationalism or fideism may be present.[15]
Accommodation. We must update and revise the faith to reach people. We ought to forge a theology that can gain support from and connect with culture. This is essentially Niebuhr’s “Christ of culture.” Bloesch notes “the Christ it upholds is drawn from and shaped by the cultural ethos more than by the biblical revelation.”[16] This is traditional liberal theology. I would put Schleiermacher here, and perhaps some of Rauschenbusch and radical feminist theology like that of Rosemary Reuther, which locates authority in experience.[17]
Correlation: This is a mediating, “Christ above culture” approach. Apologetics prepares the way for theology, and Christ will eventually reconcile culture with Himself. “[I]nstead of categorically repudiating worldly wisdom, they endeavor to assimilate it in a Christian world view or faith perspective.”[18]
Confrontation. This is Bloesch’s position. It focuses on the antithesis between faith and culture. Its goal is conversion to the kingdom of God. The Gospel confronts and calls us to defect to God. It’s more about proclamation than apologetics—a “Christ transforming culture”-ish approach. The kingdom is leaven in the world, changing it from within. It is “not an apologetic that leaves the fortress of faith to engage in struggle with the world on its own terrain but an apologetic that finds its security precisely in the fortress of faith and calls the world to unconditional surrender by acknowledging the authority of the fortress of faith over its own domain.”[19]
Keller—All/And
Tim Keller re-shaped Neibuhr’s categories, helpfully critiqued each, and didn’t settle on either model.[20] Each of us, he suggested, is likely attracted to aspects of different models based on our gifts. We ought to treat these models and their attributes like a buffet—picking and choosing strategies based on our cultural moments and context.[21]
Here is Keller’s taxonomy:
Transformationalist. We engage culture through an emphasis on pursuing our own vocations from a Christian worldview.[22]
Relevance. “The animating idea behind the Relevance model is that God’s Spirit is at work in the culture to further his kingdom.”[23] This is Niebuhr’s “Christ of culture” and “Christ above culture.”
Countercultural. The church is a, well … countercultural alternative society opposed to the world.
Two kingdoms. “God rules all of creation through the ‘common kingdom’ in which people operate by natural revelation and the ‘redemptive kingdom’ in which Christians are ruled by special revelation.[24]
Keller, Center Church, p. 231.
My approach—Bloesch-ish
There is a reason why I defined “culture” at the outset. I’m skeptical that the distinctive ideas, customs, social behaviors, and ways of life for particular nations or peoples in Creation 1.0 will survive the jump to Creation 2.0. So, I don’t believe the church is called to “influence culture,” because this culture is scheduled to go up in flames. This doesn’t mean local churches must be isolationist. I don’t believe congregations exist to “influence culture,” but to push God’s counterculture into the public square as the ordained alternative. Supporting inner-city Gospel missions, crisis pregnancy centers, local schools (etc.) are not ends in and of themselves—they’re vehicles to show and tell God’s values and His Gospel to outsiders.
So, I’m largely unmoved by Keller’s framing (see his horizontal bar across the middle of the graphic), because “influencing culture” is not a goal. Getting people to defect from pagan culture and to God’s community is the goal. Churches must use innovative means to achieve that, motivated by love, compassion, and justice.
So, my framing is less “how do we influence culture” and more “how should we respond to culture.” Thus, I believe Bloesch’s discussion was more helpful. I have freely adapted and condensed his taxonomy and contextualized it for 2022. How should local churches respond to the disaster that is American culture? There are at least three different, contradictory ways Christians choose to answer that question:[25]
The Alamo (defense). Fortify the walls, stock ammo, hunker down, and wait for Jesus. This is a defensive ethos—it’s about protecting the church. Even apologetics is less about engaging the enemy than about protecting Christians from being seduced by the Dark Side—like poor Kylo Ren. The mantra is to keep things pure and strong while we hold off “the enemy.” Despite protestations, it’s often less about evangelism and the Great Commission, and more about protecting church from danger. There is a pervasive “things ain’t like they used to be, and I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore” vibe at work.
Play-Dough. Accommodation to cultural tastes, with rationalizations. God is not a gendered being, feminine pronouns for Her are fine, Jesus has no sexual ethics, do what makes you feel good, faith is about feeling, not doctrine, “you do you.”
Confrontation (offense). This perspective is less about “protecting the church,” and more about winsomely confronting the world employing various innovative means, and calling people to defect from Satan to Jesus.
It might be helpful to picture these three ways in simple pictures:
The Alamo. Fade in on a castle with its doors barred, its drawbridge raised, its moat filled with hungry crocodiles, snipers on the parapets,[26] people sheltering inside, archers deploying, knights with swords at the ready, anxious to charge if the door is breached. The villages round about are the enemy—and they want to destroy your kids.
Play-Dough. Focus in on the same castle. The folks are burning it down. They sift through the rubble and donate the stones to local nationals to build a shrine to a Veggie Goddess—who is really just Jesus by another name, anyway.
Confrontation. The castle is the church’s stronghold in an unholy land—an embassy to represent Christ to folks who want to know more, and at the same time a forward operating base to push His message into the world aggressively, forcefully … and engagingly. It wants local nationals to join the castle community.
Your view of “church v. culture” will shape your posture towards the world:
Alamo: Focus on holiness for defensive purposes, so you’re not seduced by the Dark Side (like Vader). Emphasis on bible reading, bible interpretation, defending the faith. A relentless, perhaps even unwitting “insider” focus—resources emphasize being educated about “dangers” facing the church, protecting your children, etc.
Confrontation. Pushing the message and implications of the Gospel outside the church’s walls—spiritual combat with a winning smile.
I fear many of us are tempted to adopt the Alamo ethos. There is a time and place for defense. But, we mustn’t forget offense—and we certainly can’t confuse belligerent defensiveness with that winning offense. For example, June is Pride Month:
Alamo. We preach defensive sermons from Leviticus 18 and tell our congregation that “homosexuality is bad,” and distribute free books to the congregation explaining why transgenderism isn’t Scriptural.
Confrontation. We record several short videos telling a better story than the “sex as identity” message so many people believe, then spend several hundred dollars advertising these videos on social media platforms in our local community, and invite comment and discussion.
I believe churches ought to err on the side of Confrontation, which is really just evangelism. It’s easy to stick with the Alamo ethos. I think we must do more.
[1] Carl F.H. Henry, Toward a Recovery of Christian Belief (Wheaton: Crossway, 1990), p. 15.
[3] I cannot hope to do more than briefly sketch these approaches—consult the referenced works for more detail and do not assume my abbreviated discussion here captures all the nuance of each author’s position!
[8]Ibid, pp. 40-41. “That world appears as a realm under the power of evil; it is the region of darkness, into which the citizens of the kingdom of light must not enter; it is characterized by the prevalence in it of lies, hatred, and murder; it is the heir of Cain. It is a secular society, dominated by the ‘lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life,’ or, in Prof. Dodd’s translation of these phrases, it is ‘pagan society, with its sensuality, superficiality and pretentiousness, its materialism and its egoism.’ It is a culture that is concerned with temporal and passing values, whereas Christ has words of eternal life; it is a dying as well as a murderous order, for ‘the world passes away and the lust of it.’ It is dying, however, not only because it is concerned with temporal goods And contains the inner contradictions of hatred and lie, but also because Christ has come to destroy the works of the devil and because faith in him is the victory which overcomes the world. Hence the loyalty of the believer is directed entirely toward the new order, the new society and its Lord,” (Ibid, p. 48).
[10] “… true culture is not possible unless beyond all human achievement, all human search for values, all human society, Christ enters into life from above with gifts which human aspiration has not envisioned and which human effort cannot attain unless he relates men to a supernatural society and a new value-center. Christ is, indeed, a Christ of culture, but he is also a Christ above culture,” (Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, p. 42).
“These men are Christians not only in the sense that they count themselves believers in the Lord but also in the sense that they seek to maintain community with all other believers. Yet they seem equally at home in the community of culture. They feel no great tension between church and world, the social laws and the Gospel, the workings of divine grace and human effort, the ethics of salvation and the ethics of social conservation or progress,” (Ibid, p. 83).
[11] “Hence man is seen as subject to two moralities, and as a citizen of two worlds that are not only discontinuous with each other but largely opposed. In the polarity and tension of Christ and culture life must be lived precariously and sinfully in the hope of a justification which lies beyond history,” (Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, p. 43).
[12] “Christ is seen as the converter of man in his culture and society, not apart from these, for there is no nature without culture and no turning of men from self and idols to God save in society,” (Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, p. 43).
[13] “Hence the conversionist is less concerned with conservation of what has been given in creation, less with preparation for what will be given in a final redemption, than with the divine possibility of a present renewal,” (Ibid, p. 195).
[14] Boesch, Theology of Word & Spirit, pp. 252-272.
[15] “A sectarian theology will do battle for the sake of the church or the elect, the gathered fellowship of true believers, not for the sake of the world for whom Christ died,” (Bloesch, Word & Spirit, p. 268).
[17] “If a symbol does not speak authentically to experience, it becomes dead or must be altered to provide a new meaning,” (Rosemary Reuther, Sexism and God-talk: Towards a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1993), pp. 12-13).
In American Christianity, fear has long been a popular way to frame reality. The real enemy is Satan, of course, but the form of the threat has changed throughout the decades. It’s difficult to discuss this with sufficient nuance, because Satan is the real enemy, and he is a crafty one, and his tactics do change with the times.
And yet … some flavors of American evangelicalism seem to frame reality by way of fear a bit too much. Or, a lot too much. A good deal of this is tied up with various flavors of conservative politics. This is not always religion as a cloak for crude nationalist impulses. It’s also because, as historian Jason Bivens notes, political activism by conservative evangelicals also arises “from specific religious convictions as these have been shaped by their tradition’s understandings of social and political change, understandings that they aim to transmit and promote,” (Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism[New York: OUP, 2008], p. 14).
John Fea, a Christian historian at Messiah College, discussed the phenomenon of “evangelical fear” in his 2018 book Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump. Some may frown at that title, but I beg you to stay with me. Fea is describing a real phenomenon–the same one I have in mind. This phenomenon is that, for some American evangelicals, fear really is a vehicle for framing reality.
… this short history of evangelical fear is actually pretty long—going back to the very establishment of European settlement in America. The various fears that combined to drive white evangelical Christians into the arms of Donald Trump have deep roots in American history. Evangelicals’ fears that Barack Obama was a Muslim, and that as president he would violate the Second Amendment and take their guns away, echo—and are about as well founded as—early American evangelicals’ fears that Thomas Jefferson was going to seize believers’ Bibles. The Christian Right’s worries in the 1960s and 1970s that they might lose their segregated academies should take us back to the worries of white evangelicals who lived in the antebellum South. Contemporary efforts to declare America a Christian nation should remind us of similar attempts by fundamentalists a century ago.
Believe Me (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), p. 97.
This fear informs how they view the world, how they interpret the news, what they think of folks with different politics than their own. It impacts evangelism and a local church’s public face. Too often, that public face is one of outrage or bitter sullenness–sentiments incongruous with the joy the Gospel ought to bring, and the optimism it should foster in one’s heart.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can be firm, but not angry. Realistic, but not afraid.
In this excerpt from a recent sermon, I chat a bit about this. I’m commenting specifically on the Acts 2:47: “they praised God and had favor with all the people.”
I’ve been slowly wending my way through Kenneth Latourette’s wonderful History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500. I began the book at the year 500 A.D., finished it, and have now circled back to the beginning to fill in the gap. I came across this observation from him just this morning:
Christians know they should be united, but they often are not. Because we are what we are, the quarrels are often about secondary issues―disagreements over how to express Christianity. The disagreements are rarely about the trinity, the Gospel, two-nature Christology, or original sin. It’s a sad disconnect, and it’ll never go away as long as we’re east of Eden.
Recent circumstances in my congregation make me read Latourette’s comments with sadness. We’ve had six people leave our church in the past two months because we had a wedding as the worship service on a Sunday morning.
I was told it was blasphemous to “usurp” the “proper” worship service.
I was told it was a “poor testimony” to unbelievers to see a wedding on a Sunday morning.
I was criticized for allowing decorations to be put up which “covered the cross” behind the pulpit … even though that cross is only two years old, and for 37 years there was nothing on the wall behind the pulpit.
I was told it was wrong for me to move our Wednesday evening bible study and prayer meeting to another room inside the building so we could stage wedding decorations in a convenient place.
I was told I allowed the building to be made to “look like a bar” because there was subdued lighting.
One (now former) member told me she didn’t believe I had made “Godly decisions” and thus no longer trusted me.
Another (now former) member suggested that, because the folks who did the lighting had the word “dragon” in the company name, we had somehow colluded with Satan (cf. Rev 12).
One (now former) member pointed his finger at me angrily during a public meeting and said I was wrong to remove the American flag from the platform for the wedding. I now plan to never return that flag to the platform.
Another (now former) member said I did not preach the Gospel, and suggested I received poor training.
Another (now former) member suggested I was wrong to point out during a recent sermon that Bob Jones University has a legacy of evil racism, and that the university didn’t drop its inter-racial dating ban until 2000. He explained Bob Jones University “had reasons for those policies.”
I was heavily criticized for allowing the wedding party to hold a private reception inside the church building afterwards, during which time they danced. I was told I allowed the building to be desecrated.
In short, my decision to hold a wedding for two church members as the worship service on a Sunday morning has prompted an exodus of six people. In each case, I interpret the wedding as the “final straw” and the trigger for a decision which was inevitable. I attribute it to three factors; the first two are often intertwined but are not quite the same:
I do not model an “America exceptionalism” brand of Christianity.
I do not hold to a second-stage fundamentalist philosophy of ministry which sees holiness as synonymous with a culturally conditioned and scripturally suspect set of external behaviors.
I believe a church which fails to plan and execute corporate evangelism is derelict in its duties. Results are God’s business, but the responsibility to spread the Gospel is ours. This is non-negotiable. Thus a church which is purely insular is a useless social organization. One (now former) member complained that I spoke about the Gospel too much.
Local churches will always struggle to “make real” Jesus’ heart for unity. For me, this is a particularly sad blow because one of our congregation’s three “platforms” is to build community and love one another. This is a frequent emphasis in my sermons and teachings. Unfortunately, it isn’t yet a reality in our congregation. Like many churches, ours is small. Morale will suffer. It ought not to be this way. It makes me so sad, because I don’t know what these people think Christianity is. What have they been doing all their lives? How many others (in my congregation and yours) think the same way?
When Christians consider whether and how to legislate morality, we’re immediately confronted with the fact we’re actually asking two questions:
What should inform the content of public morality in an ideal sense? That is, setting present geo-political realities aside and focusing only on transcendent values, what is “the public good,” how can we know it, and to what extent should we advocate for it in the public square?
How does the Church apply this public morality in real life, within the geo-political, pluralist realities that are the real world?
One way some Christians have answered the first question is to turn to natural law theory; specifically, a broadly Christian form of natural law. Is this a fruitful path?
What is natural law theory?
When we say, “natural law,” we mean it is “natural” in the sense that it reflects the nature, essence or intended form of something (X). “Law” refers to a normative dictum that explains what X, in light of its nature, should do in certain circumstances.1 This means human beings can (1) observe the nature and intended purpose of something, and (2) these observations form the basis for moral values and obligations.
So, to bring this down to earth, consider human beings. Natural law is our perception (even unwittingly) of the divine order within ourselves, by which we’re inclined to right action. We can observe ourselves, draw conclusions about our meaning and purpose, and so learn how we ought to behave. If you’re ever bored enough to read legal statutes, you’ll find that human laws are the result of a society’s reasoned application of general principles to particular cases for the common good. This is why even something so esoteric as the Washington State insurance code can proclaim:2
The business of insurance is one affected by the public interest, requiring that all persons be actuated by good faith, abstain from deception, and practice honesty and equity in all insurance matters.
It’s doubtful the Washington State legislature wittingly relied on natural law theory to craft this statute. Yet, there is an implicit appeal to such a law in that text. There is a public interest. Good faith can be known, defined, and it is “good,” (etc.). Indeed, some form of natural law must be the foundation for human law.3 Or else, we’re cast into the morass of subjectivism and individualism.
Christian natural law theory says scripture presupposes this divine ordering. David Haines and Andrew Fulford advance three propositions to express this idea:4
there is an objective order to the universe;
this order is objectively visible, there for all to see, “whether one is wearing the spectacles of Scripture or not;” and
at least some unbelievers perceive this order.
They explain:
the very fact of divine creation seems to point towards what has been traditionally called natural law: the notion that there is, because of the divine intellect, a natural order within the created world by which each and every created being’s goodness can be objectively judged, both on the level of being (ontological goodness), and, for human-beings specifically, on the level of human action (moral goodness). Ontological goodness is the foundation of moral goodness.5
In one of his famous five “proofs” for God’s existence, Thomas Aquinas explained we can perceive God from the observable order of the world:6
We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end. Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.
God, as it were, created everything as a carpenter plans and creates a piece of furniture.7 He sees an image in His mind’s eye, then executes that plan. Thus, God has a moral standard to which men are accountable, and His mind contains that “ideal” purpose and end of everything in His creation.
Scripture presupposes that this natural ordering and purpose exists. Here are but a few examples:8
Jesus’ so-called “Golden Rule” (Mt 7:12) presupposes that everyone, regardless of their spiritual state, acknowledges it is “good” to treat others equitably. This is as close to a universal moral good that one can get.
Deuteronomy 4:5-6. If the Israelites obey God’s laws, pagan nations “will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people,’” (Deut 4:6). If unbelievers can look at God’s objective “good” and appreciate it, like it, acknowledge, want it—then there must be an objective “good” to define human flourishing. It isn’t a social convention; it actually exists and can be seen, known, appreciated.
In creation, God pronounced it all “very good,” which surely means there is an objective “good” to this world.
How, then, can we know right and wrong?
Well, first we need to understand that everything, including men, women, boys and girls, is made by God for a specific purpose or end. An ear is made to hear. A sock is made to fit on your foot. A book is meant to be read. A car is meant to transport you to and fro.
You can abuse the original design by using it in a way the designer didn’t foresee. For example, a neighbor of mine recently used his Jeep to prop up a section of fencing that had collapsed in his backyard. It “worked,” I guess, but it was crude. Why? Because the Jeep wasn’t designed to do that—it wasn’t its nature or raison d’être.
You could say there is a “fitness” and “unfitness” to everything, depending on its created purpose.
Thus fitness or unfitness may be affirmed, at every moment, of every object in existence, of the volition by which each object is controlled, and of every intelligent being, with regard to the exercise of his will toward or upon outward objects or his fellow-beings. Fitness and unfitness are the ultimate ideas that are involved in the terms right and wrong.9
So, consider marriage, children, government, attitudes towards elders, the sanctity of life, political society, political authorities—what are God’s purposes for these institutions? What is their nature? When you find that out—when you figure the ends for which God made them—then you have a secure base from which to understand and uphold these realities in the world.10
But, again, how can you figure out these ends? How can you know what they are?
Certainly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives one a new mind and a new heart, along with the illumination to understand divine revelation. Indeed, if God created a binding moral order, it seems He’d be remiss if He did not reveal Himself and this moral order to His creation.11
Not so fast?
However, natural law seems to not require this step. Instead, it asks one to reason from natural revelation—to extrapolate from the observable order to “think God’s thoughts after Him” in a whole host of modern contexts. Specifically, we can know right from wrong by considering various forms of the questions (1) what is the nature and purpose of the one doing the action,12 and (2) what is the purpose of the action, (3) what are the motivations behind the action, (4) what are the consequences, (5) what are the means by which we propose to accomplish this end, and (6) what are the circumstances surrounding the action?13
However, Haines and Fulford’s blanket assertion that when human beings observe human nature and draw conclusions about it, “we are thinking God’s thoughts after Him,” is not quite correct.14 Satan has thrown a dark cloak over people’s minds to “keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” (2 Cor 4:4). This a blindness to reality, including natural law, for which we must account. This means unbelievers will not always “see” the natural order flowing from a created order at all. Christians will usually have to do a three-step dance when pressing the reality of natural law; (1) it exists, (2) your sin stops you from seeing it in creation, and then (3) do you see it now?
Indeed, there are non-Christian theories about natural law predicated on secular bases. These contrasting theories “differ widely about what human nature is and, as a result, about the moral theory that can be derived from it.”15 Indeed, different schools of thought (even within Christian circles) disagree about the essence of human nature itself and, thus, the implications about the “ends” to be drawn from its nature. “Unless that picture can be firmly established in sufficient detail to warrant the moral inferences drawn from it, the theory as a whole will lack credibility.”16
So, for example, can we legitimately employ natural law theory to forbid birth control? After all, the reasoning goes, the “natural end” of marriage is procreation (or, is it!?), and birth control would impede this purpose, so it is morally wrong. It therefore seems that to be most persuasive, Christian natural law theory must function with some degree of abstraction.
Preliminary assessment
Nevertheless, does natural law theory provide the Church with a framework to understand the “public good” regarding legislation of morality in the public square? It does, but only obliquely. Simply put, why do Christians need natural law theory when they could just point to scripture? That, of course, is the rub—nobody wants to use scripture in the public square. Natural law theory, for all its promise, seems to be a method for reasoning “God’s way” while not actually pointing to anything God has said.
Does it answer our second question? That is, does natural law theory help Christians “think God’s thoughts” via legislation in a pluralist society, in 2021? Haines and Fulford say it does:
The precisionists and the Anabaptists were wrong to deny that any just political order could be founded that did not submit to their own private and special revelation, since justice can be known from the wisdom in God’s creation.17
I am not yet convinced. To use just one example—people in the West simply do not acknowledge God’s justice or God’s objective order. Natural law theory appears to gravely underestimate the noetic effect of sin, which will inevitably prevent some people from agreeing with the specific implications of its general premises. In other words, while natural law theory supplies the Christian with some philosophical heft as a complement to a Reformed epistemology, I am not convinced it alone is a suitable vehicle for grounding moral values or legislation.
I am very new to the concept of natural law theory, and perhaps I have misunderstood it here. But my assessment at this date is that it would be simpler to use scripture to advocate for God’s values in a pluralist society. In that respect, it reminds me of the debate between classical and presuppositional apologetics.
Notes
1 David Haines and Andrew Fulford, Natural Law: A Brief Introduction and Biblical Defense (Lincoln: Davenant Press, 2017), pp. 4-5.
2 Title 48, Revised Code of Washington; RCW 48.01.030. Emphasis added.
6 This is Thomas Aquinas’ “fifth way” of proving God’s existence from Summa Theologica, First Part, Q1 (“does God exist?”), A2.
7 “[T]he divine mind ‘contains,’ or is, the ideas of all created beings—what we call exemplar causes—in much the same way that the carpenter’s mind contains the idea of a finished table prior to beginning his work,” (Haines and Fulford, Natural Law, p. 23).
12 The Westminster Larger Catechism sums it up nicely when it says, “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy Him forever,” (Q1, A1).
The Eccentric Fundamentalist 