In his thought provoking book, Exiles, Michael Frost writes concerning the demise of Christendom in the West,
Although the Christendom story no longer defines Western culture in general, it remains the primary definer of the church’s self-understanding in almost every Western nation, including, and perhaps especially, the United States. (emphasis added)
From the misguided efforts of the two Southern Baptist “Justice Sundays” to influence the nominations of supreme court justices, to the feeling that churches ought to get a discount at the local hardware store, to “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” the cries for the return of Christendom resound throughout evangelical life. For anyone alive today in the United State who was born before the 1970’s, the most thorough indoctrination that we have imbibed is not fundamentalism, but Christendom. We have imbibed it because it was all we had to drink. Indeed, until the last couple of decades it would have been as impossible for American Christians to imagine life without our worldview as predominant as it would have been for a 14th century farmer imagining that the pope was not involved in politics.
From the turbulence of the 1960’s in America with free love, free drugs, radical music, the Vietnam war’s impact on society and other culture shaking changes (most neatly bound together at Woodstock) through the fall of modernity near the end of the 20th century, to the rise of postmodern thought, Christendom in the U. S. teetered, tottered and then collapsed. That collapse has reverberated through evangelicalism though many evangelicals didn’t feel it as a collapse; it was only felt as varying salvos in the various skirmishes in the culture wars.
Organizations like the Moral Majority came into existence ostensibly to “return America to God,” never successfully defining what that meant and whether it was even possible. Prayer for “revival in America” was, for many, little more than a cry for Christendom’s return…the Christendom where we were revered, taken seriously, respected, influential in communities and had prayer in schools. The Christendom where “One nation under God” was believed, even if not biblically supported.
In an article on Fox News, Erik Stanley, Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona anti-ACLU legal consortium, regarding “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” had this to say:
Pastors have a right to speak about Biblical truths from the pulpit without fear of punishment. No one should be able to use the government to intimidate pastors into giving up their constitutional rights.
Fair enough. Now if Mr. Stanley could be so kind as to show us where the Bible says “Vote for John McCain” or “Vote for Barack Obama” then we can get on down the road. Of course, as we all know, there is no “biblical truth” having to do with the public endorsement of a candidate in a church. Which “constitutional right,” exactly, has been given up? Were they preaching on the blood atonement? Against hatred of our brothers in Christ? Were they preaching against injustice? Doing an exegesis of 1 Corinthians 13 when IRS agents burst through the door waving tax-exempt revocation paperwork? Of course not.
The simple fact is that these thirty-three pastors, representing maybe a 100th of a percent of America’s pastors were doing absolutely nothing that the Bible requires pastors to do. I’m not saying that they did not feel very compelled to do it. One pastor, however, left little doubt as to why he participated: “Well I’m doing what I’m doing because I’m angry, I’m mad.” And there it is. Why in the world would a pastor get mad because he cannot say, “I endorse John McCain for President” in the course of a Sunday morning message? Churches can hold voter drives, pass out voter information, take people to the polls to vote and serve as voting precincts (ours does). After the service, any pastor can tell any member of his congregation, or all of them, “I intend to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain (or Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin or *snicker* Cynthia McKinney) and encourage you do to the same” without violating any IRS regulation. One Georgia pastor had also been very involved in the big save the 10 Commandments drive related to Judge Roy Moore’s Alabama efforts a few years back. All this, to me, smacks of a desire to return to Christendom, which, for most of us is a return to that with which we are comfortable.
The truth is that for many American Christians our issue is lack of comfort at not being the top dog religion anymore. We don’t know how to respond to tolerance and pluralism and we fear that which we do not understand. I recently read a person who said that America should hold Christian values since the majority are Christians. (Besides the issue that this is probably not accurate, if that is prevailing opinion then we really have not argument against sharia law.) A dufus Georgia lawmaker recently said that the majority should rule in a certain legal quandry. So much for the republic and the rule of law. This is all a clamoring for Christendom.
Churches have spent so much time trying to reinstate Christendom that they have missed the opportunity to reach those who have gown up apart from Christendom or, indeed, grew up in post-Christendom. The strategies needed to reach those born into Christendom are radically different than those born into a time the the Christian worldview no longer dominates. I shudder to think how much energy has been spent in “evangelizing” people who are at a completely different starting place with no frame of reference for our Admit, Believe, Confess, 3-steps-to-salvation presentation leaving us shaking our heads at their “lack of faith.”
Here is my take on our current situation: There is going to be no third Great Awakening in the United States. Christendom has fallen and it can’t get up and, frankly, Christians should be standing on it to keep it down. The church has always done better on the fringe and the fringe is where we are headed. Local churches have a great opportunity to minister in the vacuum left behind by the collapse of Christendom–an opportunity to big to miss.
