Sunday, November 21, 2004

A Culture Hostile to Christian Faith?

Super blogger, author, and radio host Hugh Hewitt mentions a letter in the New York Times today, a letter that purports to excoriate Christians. After reading Hugh's post, I dashed off the following email:
Hugh:
Your comments about hostility to Christian faith was timely. While you were addressing the comments of letter-writers of a particular partisan bent, I believe that the hostility you identify is substantially present in the mainstream media. This came up in the discussion during our adult Sunday School class this morning.

Summarizing the expressed views which we all seemed to share:

(1) We definitely feel that the mainstream media portrays faith in Christ as belonging only to people who are prejudiced, stupid, arrogant, or ridiculous;

(2) We know that we live in and accept the reality of our pluralistic society. But whether in the mainstream media or in other places, we sense the expectation that we should never publicly utter a word about our relationship with Jesus Christ;

(3) We think that Christian legalists, by their apparent belief that God is so puny that they must protect Him through verbal attacks on others, play into the hands of those who denigrate Christian faith, making it more difficult for other Christians to present a positive witness for Christ.

It's good for Christians to remember that it was in a hostile environment that the message of Christ and the Church first took root in the Mediterranean basin. The God we know through Jesus Christ is bigger than whatever hostility we may encounter as Jesus-Followers.

The apostle Peter has great advice for us as we face the hostility of those who spurn Christ:

"Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear so that when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil." (First Peter 3:15-17)

The stereotype much of the media creates of Christians is that we are hostile people, against progress, judgmental, prudish, and intellectual lightweights. Peter says that we ought to baffle those who malign our faith by loving and respecting them and then, when they suspect that they don't have us figured out, be ready to tell them why we hope in Christ.

First Peter is clearly the book Christians need to read and study voraciously as we cope with a culture substantially hostile to Jesus Christ.

God bless!

Mark Daniels

1 comment:

foxwizard said...

Mark,
I too read Mr.Hewitt's column, and have just perused your response. While there is much we agree about, there are some things I would like to take issue with.

First, I want to applaud your condemnation of 'certain Christian legalists', whose understanding of God is so puny they think they need to defend Him. But I don't think you go far enough in that regard. Nor do I think your or Mr. Hewitt give enough credit to the esteem in which our society continues to hold the institutions of Chrsitianity.

Granted, there are many things in our culture that are inimical to the pure faith; has it ever been otherwise? I class such things among the results of original sin (a doctrine, btw, sadly lacking attention in our time). You, yourself state that we live in an pluralistic society. But in saying this, you go on to say you sense an expectation that "we should never publicily utter a word about our relationship with Jesus Christ," I believe the judgement is somewhat misdirected. Having labored for years within the institutional church, I once shared the same view. But now, working as a consultant who is constantly visiting the offices of various enterprises, the news that I am/was a Chrsitan pastor, elicits not hostility but sincere questions and great respect.

The only ones who seem to want to call into question my faith are Christians of the fundamentalist tradition, whose attitude seems to swing between two poles:
A. I must not be worthy, therefore I was defrocked and should be condemned (as you may or may not know, I left on my own and for my own reasons, and plan to return to the pulpit when God desires it).

B. My faith is weak because I am a member of a 'traditional' denomination and have not learned true Chrsitanity. There is some pity mixed with condemnation on this one.

Overall, the parts of popular culture that seem most hostile to faith are those things advanced in the political arena by the Christian right: untrammeled crony capitalism which starves children and pays obsequience to wealthy capitalists; dedication to never ending war and the continued maintenance of the military industrial complex as a means of imposing Christian virtue on heathen nations; the elevation of single-issue politics over the common good; the denigraton of constitutional, democratic rule in favor of theocratic plutocracy.

Even Hollywood, with all the garbage they produce, manages to show a surprising amount of respect to the Chrstian faith. I'm sure you enjoy the films of Otto Preminger and Cecil B. DeMill as much as I. what about the biblical films of Ted Turner?

I would also argue that the mainstream media (now owned and controlled by about six corporations) stereotypes the Christians as "hostile people, against progress, judgmental, prudish, and intellectual lightweights," because that's all they hear. Even the mainstream churches, when they speak out, seem to echo the rage and condemnatory language of the moral majority, as did the Roman Archbishop of St. Louis when he urged his flock to vote for Mr. Bush because "homosexuality is against life."

In other words, while Mr. Hewitt would place the blame for this rather curmudgeonly picture of Christians on the media and society, I would place it on the more genuine Christians who do not make their voices heard. They will not enter the political arena (or do so aplogetically), they are defensive when confronted with the faux faith of people's whose only concern is that "I was saved," and they are unwilling to take to task a narrow mockery of the faith that spews venom instead of peace, hatred instead of love and condemnation instead of violence.

Let me choose one issue to demonstrate my pont, and it's one on which I think we honestly disagree. As a liberal, I am committed to keeping the government out of conversatinos between a woman and her doctor, especially concerning her reproductive health. Mark, I know you are anti-abortion; but so am I. What you may not know is that I, and most flaming liberals like me, are not pro-abortion but pro-life. I believe in helping young women so they have choices besides abortion; I believe the death penalty is overused; I believe that the presence of hand-guns in homes leads to more violence, not less. I also believe that if we withdraw the assistance that offers alternaitves to ending unwanted pregnancies (education, counseling, birth-control, pre and post-natal support, good education, job training and nutritional assistance), if we as a society decide to end these things so that Bill Gates can save another $100,000 on his tax bill, we will create more abortions, not fewer. Making abortion illegal only exacerbates the problem. We need to address the causes.

That, for what its worth, is one pastor's view.