| |
Pulpits Before Politics
by Rev. P. Andrew Sandlin
from the _Chalcedon Report_, October 2000
||| Pietistic Withdrawal |||
Two serious temptations confront Christians as they ponder the
relationship between their faith and modern politics. The first
is _pietistic withdrawal_. This approach dominated most of Western
Christianity from the 1870s to the 1960s. It is the notion that
"good Christians" don't dirty their hands with politics.
The really important thing is individual piety - Bible-reading,
private prayer, church attendance, soul winning, and so on - and
getting ready for the any-moment "rapture" of the saints
up to heaven. For Christians to get involved in politics is to divert
their attention from their "true calling."
Pietistic withdrawal created a vacuum into which secular humanism
eagerly rushed. When Christians abandoned their world-conquering
spirit, secularists and other non-Christians adopted a world-conquering
spirit of their own. They soon assumed the crucial positions of
cultural leadership: the denominations, education, technology, the
arts, media, and politics. They became The New Establishment, replacing
the long-lived Christian Establishment. It was Christians' pietistic
withdrawal that permitted this. In other words, Christian withdrawal
permitted secular conquest. The agents of withdrawal therefore have
only themselves to blame for much of the evil in modern society.
In the 1960s a significant segment of Christians recovered certain
aspects of the older world-conquering spirit. Led by aggressive
Christians like Chalcedon's Colonel V. Doner, Christians left their
marginalized cultural ghettos and began fighting battles to restore
Christianity to more areas of life particularly politics. The Old
Christian Right was formed from this ethos. It was partially successful.
||| Political Salvationism |||
Its very successes, however, contributed to another problem almost
as dangerous as, and sometimes more dangerous than, pietistic withdrawal.
I refer to _political salvationism_. This is the notion that politics
is the chief sphere of social change or, worse yet, of Christian
responsibility altogether. Since roughly the French Revolution,
crusading secularists have been statist to the core. Why? Because
when one abandons hope in the power of man's regeneration activated
by the Holy Spirit, he must employ coercive methods of social change
- and, don't kid yourself, the state is all about coercion. So if
you deny that God changes people's behavior by the gospel, you must
presume that humans must change it by guns, prisons, torture, and
electric chairs. This is the methodology of secular Marxists and
secular Democrats and Republicans. Many politically active Christians
over the last couple of decades have fallen into this trap - at
least in thinking that politics is central. They think that if they
can just capture the White House (or state house), they'll have
necessarily advanced the kingdom of God. This is delusional and
the limited but real Christian political successes of the last two
decades, which by no means advanced the kingdom of God, obviously
refute that notion.
||| Preaching and Social Change |||
Legitimate social change is always the effect of legitimate _religious_
change. Society is a religious fact. Relevant Christians produce
a Christian society. In other words, when people get saved and are
properly taught they start gradually changing their lives and spheres
of influence and, as a result, they start to change a society of
which they are part. But the greatest instrument instructing them
how to do that is the pulpit preaching. The problem today is that
most of today's preaching - liberal or conservative is effete and
ineffectual. On the one hand are the blathering emotionalists, for
whom Christianity is little more than heart-string-yanking sentiment
and, on the other hand, highly orthodox lectures peppered with the
original languages (and a little Latin to impress the undereducated)
which lack any fire and application and thus are _worse_ than useless,
settling the congregation into the diffident opinion that hearing
the Word the God suffices, in spite of what St. James so pointedly
says (Jas. 1:22). The preaching of the New Testament era that "turned
the world upside down" (Acts 17: 6) was Spirit-empowered, doctrinally
anchored, immediate, direct, personal, and applicational. Read,
to take but two examples, Peter's sermon in Acts 2 and Stephen's
in Acts 7.
We don't hear many sermons like that these days. We don't have
much world-conquering Christianity like that these days, either.
The preaching in the liberal Protestant denominations offers stones
for bread, scorpions for fish. The preaching in the conservative
Protestant denominations offers moldy bread and anorexic minnows.
It is no wonder that modern Christianity lacks the strength to advance
the kingdom of God in history.
There will be no healthy society without healthy Christianity,
and there will be no healthy Christianity without healthy preaching.
It is preaching that changes lives, and changed lives change societies.
From St. Paul to Chrysostom to Augustine to Luther to Calvin to
Knox to Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Kuyper, Spirit-empowered, doctrinally
anchored preaching sparks reformations and revivals. This kind of
fearless, powerful preaching ignited the American War for Independence.
(If you don't believe it, read _Political Sermons of the American
Founding Era_, edited by Ellis Sandoz.) No real revival was ever
inflamed by prissy scholars who transform the pulpit into a lecture
podium, any more than it was started by blathering pulpiteers who
engage the pulpit as a circus ring. It is not more and better scholars
or politicians that we most urgently need. It is better _preachers_
that we desperately need. From a human perspective, _everything
rises and falls on leadership_. The leadership of today's church
is largely feminized, relativized, and marginalized.
Strong, decisive manliness is scorned by feminists of both sexes.
This feminization has entered not merely the church, but also the
pulpit itself. As Ann Douglas notes in her impeccably documented
work, _The Feminization of American Culture_, in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries an incipient feminism transformed virile,
Calvinistic ministers into soap-opera, evangelical hand-holders.
It has been that way ever since.
Conservative - even Christian - politics won't turn things around.
If there is to be revival and reformation, it must start in the
pulpit, not in politics.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The_Chalcedon Report_, published monthly by Chalcedon, a tax-exempt
Christian foundation, is sent to all who request it. All editorial
correspondence should be sent to the managing editor, 14531 Loll
Ln. Apt. 49, Sonora, CA 95370. Laser-print hard copy and electronic
disk submissions firmly encouraged. All submissions subject to editorial
revision. Email: <sburns@goldrush.com>. The editors are not
responsible for the return of unsolicited manuscripts, which become
the property of Chalcedon unless other arrangements are made. Opinions
expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views
of Chalcedon. It provides a forum for views in accord with a relevant,
active, historic Christianity, though those views may on occasion
differ somewhat from Chalcedon's and from each other. Chalcedon
depends on the contributions of its readers, and all gifts to Chalcedon
are tax deductible.
© 2000 Chalcedon. All rights reserved. Permission to reprint
granted on written request only. Editorial Board: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony,
Chairman of the Board and Publisher; Rev. Mark R. Rushdoony, President;
Rev. P. Andrew Sandlin, Executive Vice President and Editor; C.L.
"Smoky" Stover, Sec/Treas; Walter Lindsay, Assistant Editor;
Susan Burns, Managing Editor and Executive Assistant. Chalcedon,
P.O. Box 158, Vallecito, CA 95251. Telephone Circulation (8 a.m.
- 4 p.m., Pacific) (209)736-4365 or Fax
(209)736-0536; e-mail: <chaloffi@goldrush.com>; Internet:<www.chalcedon.edu>.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed
a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research
and
educational purposes only.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
###
|
