Same situation, different mindset

I seem to have missed this entry over at The Grateful Christian when Pr. Fremer first posted it, but it's a worthwhile reality-check not only as regards the attitude of secular culture toward the Faith, but also in terms of the evangelism-by-accomodation which forms the most basic rationale for the Church Growth Movement and much of Missouri's official approach to evangelism these days.

The situation of the American Church in relation to our culture is remarkably similar to that of the early Church back in Roman days. But the currently fashionable approach to evangelism is just about exactly the opposite of what the First Century Church took. Whereas they evangelized the known world in a generation by not only being willing to be different and to set themselves in oppositon to the prevailing culture even to the point of accepting persecution rather than compromising, we try to become as comfortable and as non-threatening to the world and to those whom our preaching is intended to win from it as we can.

It's hard to imagine the First Century Church worrying about how to become more "seeker-friendly," designating the church in Corinth or Ephesus as an "igniting congregation," or reporting evangelism contacts to the apostles in order to maintain central tally of just how Ablaze!(c) the Church was. The Church of the Apostles was too busy being the salt of the earth to worry about whether or not the earth liked the taste of salt. It was too concerned about remaining a city set on a hill to worry about whether it was perceived as intolerant or arrogant for not striving to fit in. It was too busy proclaiming God's Word of Law and Gospel which alone can bring the spiritually dead to life to engage in a theologically flawed attempt to make itself as appealing as possible to the spiritual corpses all around it.

Christianity conquered the Western world as religio illicita- or rather, as Michael Green observes in Pr. Fremer's post, not even a religio, really- since that implied the civic element wholly missing in early Christianity (but all too evident in American popular culture and at events like the post- 9/11 Yankee Stadium travesty). Rather, in the Roman scheme of things, Christianity was a mere superstitio- a private belief which ran afoul of society not so much because it was not civic in nature, but rather because its followers were unwilling to subordinate their faith to the tolerant, all-inclusive pluralism of the civil order.

As Pr. Fremer points out, the early Church was, in short, seen by the surrounding culture pretty much the way the Secular Left sees Christianity today- as intolerant, as narrow-minded, and as seeking to impose its own idiosyncratic morality on everyone else. The difference is that instead of being willing, as was the early Church, to frankly define its relationship with the surrounding culture as a war of conquest, we try to make nice-nice with it and to have it both ways. To the extent which we succeed- the ELCA and the other "mainline" churches are the prime example- we simply become irrelevant spiritually as well as culturally. It is only to the degree to which we fail to sell out to the secular culture that we retain any commonality with the early Church, or the mission Christ gave His Church in its very founding.

It's hardly an original thought in some segments of the Church catholic that the conversion of Constantine was in many ways a spiritual disaster. But Lutherans, whose relationship with culture has for historical reasons generally been more organic than that of other denominations, perhaps need to reflect on that point- especially since contemporary American culture has largely dissolved our distinctive and traditional sense of the boundaries between what is God's and what is Caesar's- or culture's.

We need, I strongly believe, to reflect upon the degree to which our failure in evangelism is in fact the direct result of the mindset as regards the surrounding culture reflected by the Church Growth Movement and the whole "seeker sensitivity" bit- and, ironically, a concern about evangelism which is somehow held to be seperate from, and more important than, a concern for truth. The early Church didn't set out to "do evangelism," or to "win the lost." It set out to proclaim the judgment of the Maker of the Universe upon His fallen Creation, and the rescue from that judgment by the shedding of His blood. That done, the ball, so to speak, was in the court of the hearer- or, rather, of the hearer and the Holy Spirit Who indwelled the very proclamation the Church had made to the hearer.

We ask the world to do us a favor by giving us a hearing, and maybe, pretty-please, joining our church. The early Christians offered an objectively doomed world a chance to escape- and that totally on the terms of He Who offered it, with absolutely no quibbling or haggling or bargaining allowed. Take it (by the power of God's grace operating through the Word which convicts of sin and works faith), or leave it. Taking it was not (contrary to the contemporary American heresy) a choice those who were being addressed actually had. Leaving it was their ownly choice, the only exercise of will available to them- and that decision (however much the Church might regret it) carried consequences not for the Church, but for the person who rejected its proclamation. And eternal consequences, at that.

We find ourselves in a situation remarkably like that of the early Church. What makes all the difference is that we have forgotten that it is we as individuals- and the unchurched individuals we seek to reach- and neither Christ nor His Church, who are the beggars in need of alms. And why should we be surprised when unbelievers fail to understand that it is they who need what we have to offer, when our entire attitude and approach to evangelism helps sustain them in their impression that the opposite is the case?

We are not called upon to help build a new reality, but only to announce the reality which God has already established in Christ. We are called upon neither to persuade nor to sell, but to proclaim. The Church of the First Century understood this; we have forgotten it. And it is that which makes all the difference.