Stan Moody:
How is it possible that the most self-conscious wing of American Christianity, Evangelicalism, has trashed its time-honored traditions in favor of political activism? We patiently await the next Billy Sunday or Billy Graham to ignite a reformation fuse. Meanwhile, we bow in hope to political party standard-bearers of random stripes in support of the strategies of a world at war against the sovereign power of the Creator we profess to love and serve.
I believe there is emerging from the dustbin of evangelism a rising tide of deep, thoughtful searching for the “Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt 6:33). This was brought home to me this very week through an email from a seminary-trained, ordained Baptist pastor friend.
I am most thankful for my pastor friend who is wrestling, as am I, with how to be a Christian in an unchristian world. For that reason, this response should be construed not as a critique but as an encouragement to all of us to look further than our subtle presuppositions. It is simply for me an opportunity to share where I am in the battle and to invite all of us to be open to the Spirit of God in this very difficult time. Thank you for listening!
“Has the Church Lost the Battle?”
My friend poses several observations that I believe go the root of the current movement toward Christian Nationalism and away from adherence to the Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God:
1. I have found little (in your writing) in terms of “action steps” for the church that would help Christians interface with left-wing political activists in constructive dialogue.
2. Are we (evangelicals) on the attack because we have failed to do a good job of making a case for our faith?
3. Maybe there is no response (from the Church) to zealous humanists who just want to use people to advance humanism by demonizing any challenge to their empty and non-scientific rationale.
4. It seems like the Church has lost the battle if all we hear from the far-right is condemning OPS (Other People’s Sins) without a clear-headed theological, psychological, and historical case being made to convince people of the Truth.
5. Are we not in danger of losing the greatest experiment in democracy in the history of the world if all we do is call people to prayer and hum in the closet of the sanctuary?
6. The Republicans are not the answer, but at least they tend to focus on saving the country from evil and self-destruction.
7. You seem to be an advocate for the Democrats who are leading the charge against the ever- present Kingdom of God and breeding hate.
For starters, two subtle messages emerge throughout – that evangelicals are keepers of Truth and that the Truth is of a politically conservative flavor. A not-so-subtle message comes from numbers 6, and 7 above – that conservatives somehow are keeping the nation from evil and destruction and are believers in the doctrine of the present Kingdom of God.
I would draw your attention to one of my favorite passages of Scripture, the nuances of which I picked up decades ago from a Bible storybook of my infant son’s. It is Joshua 5:13-15. Joshua has brought the Children of Israel across the Jordan River and is taking a survey of the walled City of Jericho in preparation for battle. He is met by a man with a drawn sword. “Which side are you on?” Joshua asks. “Neither! I am the captain of the Lord’s army!” What that said to me is that we who profess belief are commanded to declare for God alone – not the Republican nor the Democratic Party nor America. The spiritual ground on which we stand is holy!
Possessors of the Truth but not Keepers Thereof:
The above list can be summarized in terms of several common underlying themes at the root of the Christian Nationalist movement – that Evangelicals are the keepers of the entirety of the Truth: that the Truth sets us free to enforce its precepts in God-ordered dominion over the earth; that establishing a physical Kingdom of God on earth is a command from God to His followers.
I would answer to the first underlying theme, “Evangelicals are possessors of the entirety of the Truth but not the keepers thereof by far.” To the second, I would answer, “If the person and work of Jesus is insufficient to compel the Confessing Church to shout an infectious Good News of hope from the rooftops, can that Truth be enforced only within the criminal code? If so, the Truth has failed to set even its possessors free, and, worse still, is thereby publicly ineffective.”
Have Evangelicals Abandoned the Gospel of the Kingdom in Favor of Gnosticism?
To the third theme regarding citizenship of the believer now in the Kingdom of God, I believe that the Gospel of the Kingdom of God has been buried in the appetite for having it both ways. Below is my attempt to clarify this to my Christian brother:
The Gospel of the Kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus has suffered the convenience of extinction in favor of maintaining the religious status quo as a measure of our faithfulness to God. Through such mechanisms as the 19th-century doctrine of Premillennial Dispensationalism, the Kingdom has been wholly futurized into a utopia awaiting the “Rapture” of the “keepers of the Truth”. This is nothing more nor less than Gnosticism, the heresy of the 1st Century Church, that considered our bodily natures to be inherently evil and thereby beyond redemption, and salvation to be not a matter of sin and repentance but as the result of special enlightenment.
If, as currently prevalent within Evangelicalism, the Kingdom fails to welcome the professing believer into a present, dynamic, victorious citizenship distinct from the world, we are prone to believe that we must do two things – attempt morally to build God’s Kingdom on earth (preferably in America or national Israel) and treat the “Last Days” proclaimed by Peter at Pentecost as wholly-future and as yet unrealized. It moves us outside the sovereignty of God by placing Jesus on a throne somewhere awaiting further instructions from God the Father, who is prepared to deliver those instructions when we (Gnostics?) get the world evangelized and ready for the Second Coming. It puts us more or less in charge by creating an impassable gulf between us and God.
Removing the Gospel of the Kingdom of God from our beliefs and practices has given rise to permitting us the luxury of the future benefits of salvation along with the present benefits of employing the corrupt strategies of the “world” to get what we want! Where that leaves the Confessing Church is outside the intangible will of God as sacred to our individual and collective lives. In America, we can get what we want and often when we want it, removing the uncertainty of the process of transformation into the image of Christ, 180 deg. out of sync with the culture of the “world”. The Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) then becomes a future hope rather than a Spirit-led transformation within.
By transmitting the Kingdom to the ether, the Confessing Church has trapped itself into an either/or dichotomy that has wedded it into the very political sphere that it claims to abhor. The Bible makes clear that the unbelieving world out there will not know the citizens of the Kingdom (1 John 3). What this clearly tells us is that enforcing moral precepts is not the answer to the Church’s witness to the Good News. We are strangers and aliens in this world (1 Peter 2:11). If, then, we are attempting to find the enemy to the Gospel, it is not the nonbelieving world or its politics, whatever those may be. The enemy of the Gospel is the very Church that has lost sight of the Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God and has come to cling to the American Dream of prosperity and success in pursuit of its own worldly prosperity and success.
What, Then, is the Mission of the Christian Community?
We cannot move to the sidelines the clear and unobstructed message from the Scriptures, both Old and New. Micah 6:8 asks, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Jesus provides the roadmap for such a posture of obedience in His Sermon on the Mount message on the nature and cost of love of neighbor. Further in His mission, He makes it clear where our noses must be pointed: “…seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things (needs) will be added to you” (Matt 6:33).
If we are seeking a wholly-future Kingdom of God and thereby a wholly-future system of discipline and reward, we are likely to be directed toward filling in the present with our flawed ideas of holiness, as their impact on our beliefs will be manageable. As with ancient Israel, this will inevitably lead to a conflict, not between God and the non-believing world, but between God and the Confessing Church.
If the Kingdom of God is wholly-future; if love of neighbor is wholly-future; if New Life in Christ is a benefit of repeating the Sinner’s Prayer without following Christ; if the principal purpose of the Confessing Church is to make more converts by whatever means, we are beyond the place of being able to construct “action steps” for effectiveness.
Are We Overdue to be Spit out of the Mouth of God?
The present, dynamic, triumphant Kingdom of God ultimately nudges the professing believer to a place unnatural to go – death to self in order truly to live. Instead, we are focused on building a better kingdom within the community of faith and within our nation. Merger of church with party then becomes a welcome path to equating morality to righteousness. Ironically, it points to both political parties as being complicit in the neutering of the mission of the Church. In simple terms, it’s the way of the world! We want at best to be IN the Kingdom and OF the world.
In the prophetic words of St. Peter, “For the time is come for judgment to begin in the house of God; and if it begins first at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17). In the words of Jesus, “…because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:16).
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