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Commentary
GEN-X RISING: The trouble with 'Christian America' Andrew C. Thompson, May 7, 2009
Andrew Thompson
By Andrew C. Thompson UMR Columnist
Jon Meacham’s April 13 article in Newsweek, “The End of Christian America” has frightened a lot of Christians, but it shouldn’t.
Mr. Meacham does cite statistics showing a drop in the number of professing Christians as a percentage of the U.S. population, from 86 percent in 1990 to 76 percent today.
But a closer read of his article reveals that his main interest lies in the decline of the heavily politicized Christianity so prominent in the past 30 years. For Mr. Meacham, “Christian America” means the vision of a Christianized culture promoted by the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the world.
But can there ever really be such a thing as a “Christian America”? That’s the crucial question for us to ask. And it raises the issue of whether discipleship and citizenship are fully compatible.
No one in recent decades has seen the distinction between Christian discipleship and American citizenship with better clarity than the late John Howard Yoder (1927-1997). As a Mennonite, Yoder knew what it meant to be part of a community that didn’t fit in well with the larger culture.
That’s more difficult for us Methodists, just as it is for Baptists, Presbyterians and others who have long been associated with the dominant American culture.
But Yoder saw long ago what many of us are starting to understand now. Namely, that our discipleship and our citizenship are always in conflict and often in direct contradiction.
So when the demands of the state and the demands of faith conflict, what should the Christian’s response be? At some points in history, Christians have died rather than bow to political demands that would compromise their faith. At other times, Christians have meekly conformed in order to show loyalty to the larger culture.
For Americans, it has often been different. We have the tendency to try and baptize the culture. Think of the Social Gospel movement, which fought for just labor conditions, women’s suffrage and prohibition—all from a Christian standpoint.
The more recent example in American history is the one whose demise Mr. Meacham celebrates in his Newsweek article—the so-called Religious Right, which arose under Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in the 1980s and has been the source of controversy ever since.
For his part, Yoder is deeply skeptical of the project of Christianizing America. He argues in The Original Revolution that the attempt to turn the larger society Christian by ‘Christianizing’ laws and institutions is actually a sign of unfaithfulness. Such an attempt indicates a belief that “what God is really doing He is doing through the framework of society as a whole and not in the Christian community.”
Instead, Yoder wants to Christianize the church by emphasizing that following Jesus and following the nation (any nation) are two different things. It’s a point that needs making in a culture where people have long assumed that the church and the society are pretty much synonymous.
What comes naturally to a Mennonite is not such a popular position to take in the mainline church, of course. But Yoder’s right. After all, where in the New Testament does it say that the body of Christ can ever be society writ large?
Christians can and should fight to preserve both law and social custom that we understand to fit with a Christian worldview. But we also shouldn’t think the goal of Christian discipleship is to baptize the culture.
Jesus is not using America to save the world. He’s using the church, which is his true body.
Some would counter that such a view is narrowly sectarian, but that is only because they don’t have much faith in the church as God’s true vehicle for salvation.
Yoder argues elsewhere that the way to demonstrate the proof of Christian claims is not through science or politics but rather through a church that actually reflects Jesus’ teachings. He suggests in Preface to Theology that “the best apologetics is to live before [non-Christians] the reality of the church’s functioning with its own inner consistency.”
A complicated statement, but it’s not that complicated a concept. He’s just saying that the most compelling Christian witness is found in a community faithful to the gospel command to love God and neighbor.
And if the world rejects the Christian faith? It might, but the church doesn’t exist to please the world; it exists for God. And if we believe that the power of the gospel is real, then we know that people will be drawn to it.
To put it bluntly: There never was such a thing as Christian America. There is such a thing as America, and it will eventually come to an end. There is also a Christian church, and it will not come to an end before God brings all things to completion.
So if even the most optimistic Christian someday looks out on an American landscape and realizes that he no longer believes this nation to be Christian, is that a cause for despair?
Absolutely not.
As Yoder writes in The Original Revolution, “When then is it reasonable that we should continue to obey in a world which we do not control? Because that is the shape of the work of Christ.”
For Yoder, the relationship between our faithfulness and God’s final victory is not one of cause and effect. It is rather one of cross and resurrection.
Jesus did not reconcile the world to himself by conquering Rome. The call he gave was not to powerful aristocrats to build a new Roman Senate. It was instead a call to humble fishermen, to build a church.
For us who want to obey him by following his example in mission and ministry, empty claims about a ‘Christian America’ are irrelevant. Supremely relevant, though, is our discipleship. And that discipleship will surely be more faithful as we worry less about the Christian identity of America and more about the Christian fidelity of the church.
Andrew Thompson
