“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (aka Joyous Wisdom)
Poor Nietzsche—after publishing this line in 1882 it immediately became one of his most quoted and least understood statements. Nietzsche was not decrying the physical death of God but the demise of external and absolute forms of morality. In many ways the things that Nietzsche lamented are the things that many evangelical social critics are quick to point out—we live in an age where there are no absolutes, and one which many these same critics label as the emergence of a post-modern culture.
I am not sure how postmodern Nietzsche’s quote is (or even how postmodern the culture is) but a 1966 cover of Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” Less than twenty years later the U.S. witnessed the emergence of what become known as the “Moral Majority,” and in the first decade of this millennium the “Religious Right” was said to be a major force in American politics. Apparently the answer to Time magazine’s question was a resound “NO.”
I was in a bookstore last week and there on the magazine rack I saw a recent Newsweek cover, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Apparently for author Jon Meacham the inability of the Religious Right to usher enough of the faithful to the polls last November and prevent a sweeping victory by the Democrats suggests that Christianity in general, and evangelicalism in particular, is on the cultural decline in the US. This perception was not helped recently when President Obama, speaking in Turkey said, “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Jim Wallis, quoted in the Newsweek article, noted that there is still a vital role that religion will continue to play in public discourse, it just may not be the role or constitute the same message that Religious Right has presented since the 1980s.
Wallis, like many evangelicals, believes that the Religious Right was a “mistake” (his term, not mine)—a movement that sought to implement a “Christian” agenda (defined in very narrow terms) by tying it almost inextricably to the right wing of the Republican party. After the 2008 election many fiscal Republicans began lamenting their relationship to the Religious Right noting that the rigidity of the moral agenda was out of step with the mainstream and prevented fiscal conservatives from promoting the fundamental tenets on which the Republican Party traditionally stood.
Personally, I believe that the linking of a narrow moral agenda with a particular political party was both a theological and political short-sighted. Theologically, by limiting the religious debate to almost exclusively to abortion, abstinence, and homosexuality (seems like sex is a big issue for evangelicals) the church failed to look at social issues in which Christ and Scripture speak in much greater extent—poverty, injustice, environmental stewardship. The result, politically, was that many evangelicals ignored these issues (which traditionally have been more concerns for Democrats), while voting (in an almost Pavlovian fashion) for any Republican that claimed to be “pro-life,” or “pro-family.” The result was that the church helped to promote the exacerbation of many of the social sins to which Christ and the prophets condemn. In the eyes of many unbelievers the church began to be viewed as pro-war, anti-gay, anti-living wage and health-care, unenlightened and anti-scientific in general.
Which brings me back to Newsweek and Meacham, is there a decline and fall of Christian America? Assuming that the United States ever was a “Christian” nation (a notion I take exception with) the distinction needs to be made between “Christendom” (the linking of the church to the social, political, and economic mechanisms of power) and Christianity as a creed that stands in contrast and can speak truth to power. The apostle John notes this relationship in his first epistle when he writes, “Do not love the world not the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn. 2:15).
Does this mean that Christianity does not have a place in public discourse—absolutely not. That place, however, may best expressed by theologian Walter Bruggermann, in his book The Prophetic Imagination, when he writes,
“The tasks of a prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around is.”
A prophetic ministry is counter-cultural and possesses the ability to speak truth to power. The prophets were not welcome by the political, religious, and economic elites of their day because they condemned the status quo of which they had a vested stake. Jesus was not welcomed by the religious leaders of His time, noting that they enjoyed social and political status by aligning themselves to the existing order (who else could get an audience with a provincial governor and expedite a capital trial and execution in less than a week?). If Meacham is highlighting the decline of Christendom then so be it—it may be the best thing for the church—for it will mean that social issues can no longer be expected to win simply because they are “Christian.” The church under Christendom often seemed more interested in maintaining access to power than access to people. In the end this emphasis has tended to cost the loss of access to both. If America is truly becoming “post-Christian” (a term that seems more cogent than post-modern) then the church's influence in public discourse will once again have to demonstrate the relevance of the gospel by winning debates on the basis of how Christianity seeks to work for the common good of all people.
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