Having the Form, Denying the Power
The world can't see the church without the church being the church God intends, enables, and empowers. The third in a series on the church.
View
Tim Keller, in a sermon called The Garden - City of God on the ending of the biblical story - Revelation 22 - told of a conversation he had with a pastor from Sri Lanka. This pastor related that in 2004, 150 Sri Lankan Christian churches had been burned and thousands of Christians assaulted. Shortly after, the Tsunami came. More than 30,000 coastal Sri Lankans died and far more were homeless. The Christian churches responded by going to the coastal areas to meet needs and to help rebuild. One of the members of this pastor's church was helping a family rebuild their home. This family had participated in burning Christian churches the year before. The husband and father of this family said, "Last year, we were assaulting you people. But we didn't know what you were really like."
It is a story that could be repeated in many forms and contexts throughout the world and throughout history - Christians, following the teachings they profess and empowered by the Holy Spirit, forgiving, redeeming, caring, loving in such a way as to powerfully display what Christianity is "really like." This story could be repeated in many parts of our nation in our time, but you have to look. It is far more often overshadowed by another public expression of those claiming the label "Christian" or "Evangelical" - an angry, culture warrior engaged in what they presume to be righteous conflict against their enemies. This second group, far more politically active and far more visible on social media - seems to be rising in notoriety, displacing the operations of actual Christian churches in the perception of many Americans. Tim Keller, in fact was often criticized by these very online Christians for his view that those in the church should interact winsomely with those outside the church. "Winsome" became a dirty word in some circles and one more culture war inflection point - if you thought being winsome was good, you were soft. Those outside this debate, as is often the case for these culture war microcosms, are mystified how it is better to be anti-winsome. One sees their point. (You could search Twitter for "Tim Keller Winsome" if you want to be mystified or depressed - so I guess don't do that.)
It is easy to understand the confusion of people outside the faith have when confronted with a Christian offering forgiveness and love to one who brought tragedy to their family. On it's face, it doesn't make sense. It is, however completely consistent with the teachings and commands of Christ. It is hard to understand people who claim to be Christians fighting against forgiveness - or condemning what Christ has taught, exemplified, and commanded. But here we are. How do we explain this increasing disconnect between the label of the thing and the actual thing? Perhaps it is because more and more people claim the label but disregard the practices.
The Cooperative Election Study asks over 50,000 people to self identify their religious affiliation and their religious practice. Here - provided by Ryan Burge at Graphs About Religion - is the trend from all of that data related to church attendance among these self-identified evangelicals:
That is a lot of colors and numbers, but the trend is fairly clear. The share of evangelicals who attend church weekly has dropped 10% in the last 14 years and is now less than half of all evangelicals. At the same time, the share of evangelicals who attend church monthly or less is now over 50%. The share of those who call themselves evangelicals who attend yearly or less is now 30%. Roughly 65 million adults in the U.S. call themselves evangelical - so that is close to 20 million adult Americans who call themselves evangelical but basically don’t go to church. For evangelicals who hold to a fairly straightforward if not literal reading of the New Testament (where church attendance is assumed), this … doesn’t fit. Most people who have been a part of an evangelical church for a while have a conception of evangelicalism that assumes the Christian life not only includes church attendance, it assumes all the things that go with it or are usually only found there - worship, devotion, community, service, generosity.
Looking more closely, this also seems to be more of a trend on the right than on the left. Ryan Burge makes this observation in a number of ways in the Graphs About Religion piece I mentioned above - but below is a graph, based on the same huge sample of self-identified evangelicals, that makes the point in a striking way. This is a comparison of the importance of religion among these evangelicals who never attend church.
Among evangelicals on the right (which is by far most of them), the share among those who never attend and who believe that religion is somewhat or very important is 38%.
So almost 40% of these evangelicals on the political right who never attend church believe religion is important. They believe it is important while they do not practice it in a form recognizable in the New Testament.
All of the trends in the data show that, for an increasing number of self-identified evangelicals, Christianity is what you claim to believe while being disconnected from the practice of Christianity. Since claimed belief has become a culture war inflection point, some who claim the name evangelical, especially on the very online right, have become increasingly intolerant of those who claim (even a slightly) different set of beliefs, or who have a nuanced view of these same beliefs. And because belief and practice have become increasingly disconnected for these self-identified evangelicals, intolerance (for those within the church as well as those outside it) has become all too common. It is how a man like Tim Keller who started a church in Manhattan with conservative Christian theology that grew to over 5,000 in attendance was somehow too … soft? Many of those criticizing him (from the Christian right) never or rarely darkened the door of their church.
How does this impact how we interact with each other? Ryan Burge again, using this huge data set (remember all of this data is given by respondents who are sharing this data about themselves):
When it comes to religion, guess who are the least tolerant? Those who believe the Bible is literally true. Guess who are the most tolerant? Those who attend religious services at least once a week.
The belief facet of religion is often caustic. It drives division and eschews compromise. It says, “I’m right and why should I tolerate your wrongness?” The behavior facet of religion (should) put us in contact with people who are different than us. Economically, politically, educationally, and racially. That builds bridges and cultivates tolerance.
What American religion has become is primarily all the harmful aspects of religion and very little of the democracy building activities that we very desperately need. It’s been reduced to a weapon that is wielded in the culture war debates without any training in it’s proper use.
That’s why religion has become so polarized - because the type of religion that most Americans see now has been stripped bare of all the best parts. And all we are left with is the division, the hate, and the vitriol.
Ryan Burge - Graphs About Religion
A lot of Evangelicals who attend church every week (most tolerant) believe the bible is literally true (least tolerant). Which means that the intolerance of those who don’t attend overshadow the practice of the church attenders. And so I would say the last part a bit differently. The division, the hate, and the vitriol are not the bad parts of religion, they are the natural result of claiming the label of Evangelical without really practicing it. Those who prioritize holding to a certain set of doctrines while not practicing or attempting to practice them will not display the transformation that is the natural (or supernatural) effect of the application of the doctrines. It also betrays a misunderstanding of why the doctrine is given to us in scripture - and will inevitably lead to bad doctrine (to justify the bad or non-practice). It is a lose - lose proposition, the worst of both worlds. In the end, you don’t even have the doctrine anymore, just the identity - and a warped identity at that. And that is what we are increasingly getting in America. Religion has become for many just another cultural or political claimed identity without content - which, given those claiming it, is it’s own irony.
Doctrine is vital. Doctrine without practice is a contradiction and will soon lead to bad doctrine to justify the bad practice or non-practice.
I know lots of Christians who are in a pattern of sporadic church attendance or mostly non-attendance. The pandemic is one reason, but so are the multiple failures of Christian leaders, and the culture-war identification of other Christians - some of whom they know. Others have lapsed a bit or are not sure what they believe. Those aren’t the people in this data. I am no gatekeeper and don’t have a standard of practice or attendance for anyone, God’s grace abounds to me and everyone else. It is the movement toward an emphasis on and identification with doctrine without any practice producing an angry, culture warrior stance in the world that is the concern I am trying to highlight.
God’s grace abounds to me and everyone else who will claim it.
Near the end of his life, the apostle Paul wrote to his protege Timothy - then the pastor of a church in a an increasingly hostile cultural and political environment - to give him (and us) council about what life in the church should be and what obstacles lie ahead. Here he says - and keep in mind he is speaking about those who are in the church:
Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen. Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly … (2 Timothy 2:14,16)
Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed … (2 Timothy 2:23-25a)
But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
The church exists to be the presence of God in the world - the light of the world, the salt of the earth (Matthew 5). It is to display a love for one another and a unity that proves the truth of the Christian message (John 17). It is to be a picture of a gracious, loving, worshiping, serving, forgiving, patient community of those holding to the doctrines given in grace by God in his Word while being transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. This transformation by the Holy Spirit happens through the practices of Christianity given to us by those same doctrines - prayer, worship, devotion, service, generosity. Any system where those are completely absent, or almost completely absent, can't be called Christianity. It can be called evangelicalism only by forgetting what that word originally meant and making it a cultural identifier - only by claiming the form without accessing the source of the power.
Yes, I know - the church often falls short. We often fall short. I often fall short. But it is this very ordinary looking gathering of very ordinary people in God’s name that God has designed to be the locus of His work in us and in the world. It is the arena of mostly unchosen one-another relationships within which we are to love, forgive, bear with … etc. each other. We Americans want everything to be optional. But, consistent with the doctrine we evangelicals claim to hold to, this isn’t really optional.
Those who claim the name and the doctrine as a cultural marker and who do none of the practices have the form while denying the power. Or, perhaps, they have just part of the form, thinking therein lies the power, or that they don't need the power, they just need to be right. But the form isn't the power - the power, by God's design, comes through the form. But it is sort of a package deal - you can't just pick one part of it and call it the whole thing.
Is there grace for imperfect practitioners? Of course - even wildly imperfect ones (I hope so, at least, since that counts me). There is grace greater than all the need of it I can be aware of - for me and for everyone. But the ordinary channels of that grace are a dependent relationship within the church to the triune God mediated through scripture, the practices of the church, the leaders of the church, and even the people of the church. If we close all of those doors, we eventually forget we need grace. Am I setting up a standard that is impossible to meet? It is a “standard” of a meaningful relationship with God and His people through the church He has given us - it doesn’t have to be a perfect one, or even a very good one - but it is hard to imagine calling myself part of this group while never associating with it … or to claim the name while arguing about words like “winsome” or by quarreling about cultural stances or political positions.
The church in this form - its actual form - is the only way those outside the church will see what we are “really like” - or, more theologically, will see what Christ in us is really like by the power of the Holy Spirit. Which is why the church exists, not for our identity, but for the glory of God and for His good in the world.
Links
The Garden - City of God - Tim Keller - Gospel in Life
Religion as a Cultural and Political Identity - Ryan Burge - Graphs About Religion
The Cooperative Election Study - Harvard
