"I Didn't Move; You Did" (Part 15B): The Shift Toward Christian Nationalism And The Abandonment Of Character

In the first part of this series, I spent a good deal of time looking backward. I revisited the statements, declarations, and public witness of the evangelical movement that shaped me. Again and again, I found leaders insisting that Christians must care for the poor,  pursue justice, tell the truth, defend the vulnerable, practice humility, and maintain enough distance from political power to speak prophetically to it. And we would do all of this not just personally but corporately. We were called to build a society that valued these things as well as reflected in leaders and laws.

Then I turned to the present. I have been asking a simple question: What happened? Why have so many voices that once challenged immoral presidents and unjust policies now defend and even applaud them? To look at this, I have been chronicling various areas in which a profound shift has taken place and explaining how it reveals the conservative evangelicalism I was raised in moving from solid Kingdom foundations of orthopraxy to shaky Empire foundations of power, violence, callousness and idolatry.

In the previous post, I argued that Christian nationalism changes the church in predictable ways. First, it encourages the nation to borrow God's authority for the empire's actions. We saw that in the way war can become wrapped in the language of divine mission, turning national victories into God's victories and military power into an instrument of God's kingdom.

But there is a second consequence, one that may be even more damaging to the church itself.

Once the church becomes closely intertwined with a political movement, it gradually abandons the call to speak prophetically to those in power. Instead of holding leaders accountable, it begins protecting them. Instead of confronting sin wherever it appears, it starts making exceptions for "our side." The result is not simply political compromise. It is moral compromise that deals a devastating blow to the public witness of the church.

I think nowhere is that shift more visible than in the evangelical movement's dramatic reversal on the question of character.

Why Christians Think Sex And Marriage Are A Big Deal

One of the encouragements of the Bible is that, as much as is possible, Christians are to live at peace with all people. [1] It doesn’t always work – “as much as is possible” - but as someone who is called to be a peacemaker, [2] I feel the need to try to do just that in reference to a subject that is causing a lot of friction within the church and between the church and the surrounding culture.

I am going to offer a succinct presentation of why the church has historically drawn fairly specific boundaries around issues of sex, marriage and sexuality. I don’t expect everyone to agree. I simply ask that you attempt to understand the foundation which has shaped traditional Christian thought for centuries.

I don’t know if a better understanding will or even can bring about more peace in a diverse and tense world.

I just know I want to try.

THE CULTURAL CREED OF THE UNHOMED

If I’m honest, I’m not sure where I fit in anymore.

When I look around to see who is my political neighbor, I realize I’m in a land triangulated between the liberal Left, conservative Right, and those chaotic Libertarians. I didn’t feel like the 2016 presidential candidates from any of those three parties represented my moral universe adequately enough to get my vote. I cringe at CNN and Fox in equal measure. I increasingly feel that it is important for me not to be beholden to a “side” culturally or politically.

I’m just not the kind of guy who can say, “This party or person, do or die.” 

So I increasingly find myself wandering uneasily in the topography of a world that seems intent on filling in all the Valleys full of Gray Uncertainty and leveling all the Hills of Important Nuance.  

Don’t get me wrong - I like the Plains of Certainty and the Fields of Truth. I just want to acknowledge that those mountains and valleys of Uncertainty and Nuance exist. And I don’t want to climb them with cable news talking heads, youtube faux philosophers, conspiratorial bloggers, tweeting politicians or blindly partisan Christian leaders. 

I want fellow explorers who don’t mind the hard work, who know when and how to pick a philosophical fight full of grace and truth, and who will join me at The Brew afterwards at a table full of the laughter and tears of friends because, in the end, we are determined to love each other well in a world that is broken enough already.  

If we can do that with mutual thoughtfulness and respectfulness, that table might just feel a bit like home no matter what land I inhabit.

Here we go, in no particular order: The Cultural Creed Of The Unhomed.

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Lapsing into Chaos

     German social philosopher Arnold Gehlen talked about two parts of society: the foreground and the background. The foreground is the area of life in which people willingly and freely make choices.  The background is the area in which people automatically fulfill certain societal or communal expectations.

• When Kobe Bryant shoots, his form is background – he’s practiced that shot release ten thousand times, so he doesn’t have to figure out each time where his elbow should be.  His decision when to shoot, however, is foreground.
• When I leave my house, I wear clothes (background), but I choose to wear Ohio State colors (foreground).
• I buy presents at Christmas (background), but choose gifts to match the recipients (foreground).
• At a blinking red light, I stop (background), and I choose to go when there is an appropriate break in traffic (foreground).  

Modernity moves the background to the foreground.  In other words, it takes what we accept as normative and makes it subjective. Before, people went about their daily routine without too much reflection (self-aware choice) on particular issues, as the background institutions in society brought predictability and normalized structure to their lives. Not any more.

Modernity has given the power and heightened the desire of choice.  People have increasingly rejected the power of tradition and institutions and have begun to find their own way through life.

Since modernity has brought about an increasing amount of foreground reflection, we increasingly reject the power of institutions and embrace what Gehlen called secondary institutions, which “offer entire packages of beliefs, norms, and identities to individuals.”

If this is true, it would explain the rise of radical environmentalist and animal rights movements, the increasing polarization in politics, the increased belief in the sacredness of artistic expression, and the monomaniacal fixation on sports among middle and high school families (ever spent a weekend at a travel league soccer tournament?).

All of these things have their place, of course, but not as replacement background institutions which guide and shape every area of life. Based on my past 15 years of working with youth as a pastor and teacher, I believe there are three huge background shifts effecting American culture.