Way back in 1950, a Dutch missionary thinker named Johannes Hoekendijk made the following observation about calls to evangelism in his day:
To put it bluntly: the call to evangelism is often little else than a call to restore “Christendom”, the Corpus Christianum, as a solid, well-integrated cultural complex, directed and dominated by the Church. And the sense of urgency is often nothing but a nervous feeling of insecurity, with the established Church endangered; a flurried activity to save the remnants of a time now irrevocably past.
When he speaks of Christendom and the Corpus Christianum, Hoekendijk is referencing a state of affairs in which the church and Christianity enjoy a central and powerful place in society. For Hoekendijk, calls to evangelism in his day were being marred by anxiety over that Christendom state of affairs. To put that differently, rather than their zeal for evangelism being driven by New Testament calls to spread the gospel, Christians were actually concerned with maintaining and/or recovering their place of power and security in society. In this mindset, evangelism was a pathway back to a former time when Christians enjoyed majority opinion and were the primary power brokers in public affairs.
Fast forward now seventy years, and it isn’t hard to see the same dynamics at play in American evangelicalism. Though we may be more prone to speak of mission than evangelism (though the latter term still has its place), we evangelicals have a tendency to pine after a time when laws enforced a Christian worldview, state-sponsored prayer was present in public schools, and societal schedules revolved around church meetings on Sundays and Wednesday nights. Often, these wants are intermingled with our drive to mission and evangelization, as is heard in our calls to “take America back for God.” The goal, it seems, is a return to a Christendom state of affairs.
Why does this matter? Because representing God’s kingdom in the present (the New Testament call) and returning the United States of America to a Christendom state of affairs are not the same thing. To be fair, the outworkings of these two motivations may overlap at points. Yet, they assume different goals and inspire different kinds of action.
Over the past few decades, American evangelicals have been recruited into a culture war in which they view themselves as the keepers of American morality (at least in those areas they care about) in a battle for America’s soul. Along the way, we have misremembered our past, oversimplified the present, and allowed our imaginations to be molded more by American politics than the way of God’s kingdom as defined by Jesus. Regarding our pasts, we fail to recognize our complicity in deeply oppressive structures. When we talk about “taking America back for God,” we are talking about a return to an America that was good for white evangelicals but certainly not good for everyone. Christendom, it turns out, wasn’t all that Christian. Moving to the present, we have been fed a line that to be a good Christian is to vote Republican. The problem here is that our kingdom allegiance makes politics more complicated than a simple choice between right and left. It is telling, for instance, that many of the same voices who advocate so vigorously against abortion have nothing substantive or constructive to say about calls for justice from communities of color or important issues of earth care and climate change. Why do we choose one issue and not the others? Shouldn’t our allegiance to the kingdom drive us to care about all of them? And, this doesn’t even begin to touch the problematic aspects of the Republican platform that we assume to be good. I suspect that Jesus would level full-throated critiques at both political parties were he to walk the streets of the US today. Yet, we oversimplify the system and make ourselves complicit. As for our imaginations, take a look at how Christians comport themselves on social media. The vitriol and outrage looks a lot like the American political machine and very little like Christ. Somehow, we have allowed the way of the world to overshadow the way of Jesus. Like Peter when he drew his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, we abandon the way of Jesus in the very moment we think we are standing for him.
No doubt, the above critique will rub some the wrong way, but I think it is important to consider the effects that the evangelical pursuit of power has had on us. And, make no mistake, when we’re talking about a return to a Christendom state of affairs, we’re talking about power. To be fair, I think that our pursuit of power often has more to do with a want for security rather than power itself. Regardless of its source, though, what are we to make of a pursuit that blinds us to past sin, makes us complicit in present systems, and molds us to look like the world instead of Jesus? Whatever else we can say, it certainly isn’t Christian.
When we take the kingdom as our starting point, we view ourselves as ambassadors (to borrow a term from the Apostle Paul) rather than culture warriors. As such, our allegiance is to the kingdom come rather than America past. Moreover, our action for the kingdom is always held to the standard of King Jesus - we must care about what he cares about and act in agreement with his example and teaching. Importantly, this is not to say that we should retreat from the public sphere. Especially when it comes to advocacy for those on the margins, Jesus may indeed call us into the fray. It is to say, however, that all of our action should flow from our kingdom allegiance, which has huge ramifications for the way we move through the world. For evangelicals, this means that we must untangle our allegiance to “Christian” America from our allegiance to the kingdom of God. As noted above, they may overlap, but they aren’t the same thing. And, history has shown that allegiance to Christian America hasn’t served us well when it comes to faithfulness to Christ. Christendom itself was deeply flawed, and our pursuit of it in the present takes our eyes off Jesus, who rather than seeking power came to serve and poured himself out for the sake of the many. What would it look like to allow him to truly mold our presence in the world? When it comes to re-constructing evangelical theology, this is the place to start.
We can be ambassadors or culture warriors, but we can’t be both.
Ambassadors or Culture Warriors?
I think about how Jesus lived and the melting pot of community that constantly surrounded Him. I think we forget that he lived in a Roman occupied Israel where He dined at tables mixed with both pharisees and prostitutes. The cultural subversiveness that Jesus showed us we have forgotten.
We also forget that Paul didn't call people out of persecution, but encouraged them to endure it. I think that if we think about getting back to any better way of life, it is this subversive, inclusive, enduring community we should look to model. Looking to the past can be helpful, but too often we look to the past to show us what was better and not instead looking to the past to inform us of our sins. The present will always be difficult because in the present we do not know what is to come, and that uncertainty is hard to bear. When we look to the past, we think we can endure, because it is known. I love how A.J. Swoboda directs us in one of his books to turn from the sin of nostalgia. I had never thought about nostalgia as sin, but it truly is hangup for many in the US.
In the present, there are so many christians who are on high alert looking for when the government to overstep their right to worship God. They are so certain that they must preserve or flee that it keeps them from this moment. People have told me that they can not be social workers any longer because of the oppression against white christians. Others have told me how they must create self-sustaining homesteads to provide for themselves in what is to come. Many others are leaving the states that don't favor their political affiliations because they are frustrated they have no control. And, as much as looking to get back to christianity in our nation keeps us from being with God and doing for God in the present, the same also occurs when we are projecting our future plights. The reality is, I can't be for God in the present if I don't see the present. Which is why we have Matthew 6:34 to remind us that God is our caretaker, not ourselves.
The question I have is, for those who see the need to be in the present and to turn from the past and the future, is it for us to try and persuade the others blinded by the past and future to see the present?
Amen and amen. Thank you for speaking my heart.