Christian Activism and the Legacy of the 1960s

The Controversial Stand of Pastor Greg Boyd Part 3

In my last essay, I argued that the effect of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 was to subsume traditional biblical thinking to the philosophies of the Modernist Movement. Although the trial dealt with a violation of the Tennessee Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in public schools, it was essentially a contest between the Traditionalists and the Modernists. The Modernist Movement was in full swing by the 1920’s. Although the court ruled against the defendant, it was not a victory for the Bible in American life because the ruling was based on a legal technicality, not for constitutional reasons.

I also see the Monkey Trial as the twentieth century’s first case of “separation of church and state.” The trial gave credence to the general move to replace fundamental biblical teachings for modernist thinking in the body politic. Traditional Christian teachings were relegated to the inside of church buildings, seen as having no appropriate place in education or public debate. As Joseph Loconte of the Heritage Foundation brilliantly phrased it: “We Americans jealously enforce the separation of church and state—but not the separation of faith from life.” I believe this separation of faith from life laid the groundwork for the upheaval of the counter cultural revolution of the 1960’s, the legacy of which America is still suffering today.

The decade of the ‘60’s is identified with revolution: political revolution, cultural revolution, sexual revolution. Here’s a short list of some of the revolutionary activities of the ‘60’s:

· assassination of John F. Kennedy
· assassination of Robert Kennedy
· assassination of Martin Luther King
· civil rights movement
· “President Johnson’s war”
· draft card burning
· “hell no we won’t go!”
· Woodstock
· hippies
Deep breath
· Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
· “bra burning”
· “don’t trust anybody under thirty”
· Black Power Movement
· Peyton Place
· Georgy Girl
· abortion
· Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmo

Revolution is a word jam-packed with emotion. It can have a positive meaning or an evil one depending on which side of a revolution one is on. But looking back at the 1960’s, I am hard pressed to see any real value in the counter cultural revolution. It was nothing more than a thoughtless and wholesale rebellion against authority with self-indulgent hedonism.

God established government and authority for an orderly and peaceful society. “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” (I Peter 2:13-14) The Apostle Peter continues: “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect for everyone, love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.” (I Peter 2:16-17) At the time Peter told his readers to submit to the civil authorities, the notoriously cruel Roman Emperor Nero was in charge.

I believe that the Bible not only commands Christians, but all members of a society, to cooperate with their rulers as far as conscience will allow. Sometimes civil disobedience is necessary to right wrongs. For example, Martin Luther King used Ghandi-like peaceful resistance to fight the status quo of racial discrimination and start the nation on the road to correct the racial injustices of the past. That's the beauty of our democracy: it makes room for dissent within the instructions of the First Epistle of Peter. But violent defiance, murder, promiscuity in all its forms and hedonism are not forms of civil disobedience, but rebellion against God's established order and man's execution of it. If people don’t want a society built on a foundation of biblical principles, then on what basis do they determine right from wrong or how to decide which actions of conscience may rightly supersede the law? A just and civil society cannot practice freedom without boundaries in which to operate. Without boundaries, anything goes. Some call this pure freedom, but the downside of pure freedom is its consequences.

Here are some of the consequences of sexual "freedom" that its revolution wrought:

1. The divorce rate is much higher today than 40 years ago. In 2004, the number of divorces per 1000 married women was 17.7; in 1960 it was 9.2. (National Marriage Project, State of Our Unions, 2005). According to the Heritage Foundation, children of divorced parents have more health, behavioral, and emotional problems; are involved more frequently in crime and drug abuse; and have higher rates of suicide. They also are more likely to repeat a grade and to have higher drop-out rates and lower rates of college graduation.

2. Families with children that were not poor before the divorce see their income drop as much as 50 percent. Almost 50 percent of the parents with children that are going through a divorce move into poverty after the divorce.

3. According to a Heritage Foundation study, sexually active teens are far more likely to be depressed and attempt suicide than those that wait for marriage. This same study says that 8000 teenagers a day become infected with STDs. In the year 2000, some 240,000 babies were born to girls 18 years and younger. Most of these mothers were unmarried. They and their children are extremely likely to have long-term poverty and welfare dependence.

4. Sexually active teenagers are far more likely to be depressed and to attempt suicide than those who waited until marriage.

5. Violent crime rate has quadrupled since 1960. Crime rates are also affected by demographic and cultural conditions. For example, the violent crime rate increases with the share of births to single mothers, according to a study by the Cato Institute.

6. Sevenfold increase in cohabitation since 1960 (cohabitation is an indicator of future divorce).

This is evangelism: to preach God's Word of salvation, to stop death in all its forms. I agree wholeheartedly with Pastor Boyd that Christians must be available to serve under the power of the kingdom of God to bring about long term healing for people who have reaped what they have sown. But I don't believe it is wise or scriptural to wait until the damage is done before Christians act.

Back in the sixties revolt was largely practiced by the populace against the prevailing authorities. Nowadays Hollywood, many media pundits, some elected officials and even some judges (like the ninth circuit) all seem to be actively working to institutionalize the sixties culture of rebellion, often against majority public opinion, in the name of civil rights and freedom. And Pastor Boyd says Christians are wrong, and idolators, for being involved in the public debate. I don’t know who is scarier.

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Christians Should Be Political Pacifists?

The Controversial Stand of Pastor Greg Boyd Part 2

Last time, I introduced Dr. Greg Boyd, pastor of the Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, who caused a big stink in his church in 2004 by preaching a series of sermons called the Cross and the Sword, which essentially demands that Christians practice political pacifism. Pastor Boyd has since followed up with a book based on those sermons, published in May of this year, called The Myth of the Christian Nation, which, not surprisingly, attracted the attention of the New York Times.

Pastor Boyd’s sermons generate two questions in my mind: Do the principles of the Kingdom of God preclude the participation of the Christians in the political processes of our democracy? Does participation in the democratic process contradict the sacrificial aspect of God’s kingdom?

It is tempting to answer with a simple yes or no, but then I wouldn’t have anything to write about. Besides, the answers aren’t that simple because they call into question the definition of evangelism and its place in a democracy. While many Christian leaders voice their convictions about moral and socio-political issues in the public forum, I do not believe they have forsaken power of God’s kingdom in favor of the power of politics. Rather, I believe it is precisely their loyalty to and love for the kingdom of God that motivates them to join the public debate.

Evangelism means to preach the gospel, to spread the gospel. The gospel not only glorifies the name of Jesus as the only Way to salvation, but it glorifies all that is part of the Lord's character, His wisdom, His Lordship and indeed His requirements for His creatures. On the other hand, the worldly spirit, or should I say religion, of secularism pushes a system of doctrines and practices that reject any form of religious faith and God's wise standards for a civil and just society. Without God and His standards, society has no absolute ruler by which to measure the efficacy and validity of its decisions. And yet, the secularists justify their agenda in the name of freedom. The big lie is that constitutional freedom guarantees the right of its citizens to do whatever they want whenever they want. I doubt the Founders intended an American civilization built on such a foundation of shifting sand. Christians see the folly of the secularist belief system and in turn reject it for depriving American society of the stability that religious character and influence brings. Pastor Boyd is wrong in saying that Christians defy the purposes of the Kingdom of God by utilizing the tools of the political process to take a stand for rightness in our society. Rather, Christians are fulfilling part of their evangelical purpose in God's kingdom.

Unfortunately, too many people buy the secularists’ argument that the so-called religious right is explointing the First Amendment guarantees in an attempt to install a theocracy. That's just dumb. Christian involvement in national affairs and culture has been a fact of life in America since this country’s beginning. The idea was and still is to preserve the democratic republic. The First Amendment not only guarantees the free practice of religion without the interference of government, but to also protect free practice from elements in private society that would exploit the government's power to interfere with it. How about some politically incorrect comments from a few of the august Founders?

James Madison: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government…. We have staked the future upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
Benjamin Franklin: "...the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
Thomas Jefferson: “No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man, and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example.”
John Jay: “No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom, both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian religion…. Should our Republic ever forget this fundamental precept of governance…this great experiment will then surely be doomed.”

Western and American jurisprudence is largely based on Judeo-Christian law. History, however, has shown that there has been, and always will be, challenges to this foundation.

A notable challenge was the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. A Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher by the name of John T. Scopes was charged with violating the Butler Act which forbade the teaching of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The American Civil Liberties Union helped defend Scopes as a test of the statute. Although the trial’s purpose was to challenge the constitutionality of the law, it was more a test of the nation’s loyalty to its belief system. It was a contest between the Traditionalists—those who maintained traditional biblical and Christian teachings as handed down from an original divine revelation—versus the Modernists—those who wanted to redefine those teachings and doctrines in terms of modern science. Which god would win society’s heart: science or faith? Although the court ruled against Scopes on a legal technicality, the ruling was not a victory for Christianity. After the public debate surrounding the trial, the overarching result of the trial was to banish the Bible to the inside of church buildings, charged as having no serious relevancy to society. Christian influence went dormant. Secularism began to set up its own theocracy.

I believe that the absence of Christian activism in the public square contributed in no small way to the upheaval of the 1960s. Edmund Burke said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil was for good men to do nothing.

Today, America is still suffering from the fruit of the sorry legacy that resulted from the worldly spirit having replaced the Bible’s influence: enter the counter cultural revolution of the 1960s.

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Pastor Greg Boyd Says Christians Out of Politics

The Controversial Stand of Pastor Greg Boyd Part 1

Given the reputation of the New York Times as a left-of-center journal that eschews anything that smacks of Christian and conservative ideals, I wasn’t surprised to see an article about a St. Paul, Minnesota evangelical pastor who has “disowned conservative politics” and is teaching his Woodland Hills Church congregation to do the same. Pastor Boyd asserts that the Church is too closely associated with the Republican agenda to the harm of the Church's mission to love and serve God's kingdom on earth. I can understand the Times’ interest in Pastor Greg Boyd's teachings since it was the Evangelical Christians and the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that swung the two presidential elections away from the Left’s favorite sons, Al Gore and John Kerry—or so claim a variety of pundits.

Dr. Boyd is a prolific and dynamic preacher whose knowledgeable teaching of the Bible has brought thousands to his church. This same dynamism has stirred up a fine controversy with the May 2006 publication of his book The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church. Pastor Boyd based his book on his 2004 six-part sermon called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said that the Church should stay out of politics, stop moralizing on sexual issues, cease calling the US a Christian nation and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

In his first sermon, “Taking America Back for God?” Pastor Boyd says that Christians are confusing and even fusing two polar opposites: God’s kingdom and the kingdom of this world, this world being American politics. He asserts that the Christian Church, or at least some of its leadership, is seeking "power over others" by forcing biblical morality through the power of politics and legislation. This, he says, is a mistake because it relies on earthly power, which is corrupting. Pastor Boyd calls it militant Christianity--the antithesis of the Christianity demanded by the gospel: "winning people's hearts" by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did.

The confusion between the “two kingdoms,” as Pastor Boyd puts it, happens when typically conservative viewpoints in such socio-political areas as immigration, taxation, social security, welfare and other issues get tangled up with biblical moral edicts that political conservatives and Christians often agree on. The Republican Party is generally willing to support the moral issues that are important to Christians. This does not mean that all Republicans and conservatives believe in every biblical directive nor do all Christians agree with the entire conservative or Republican political agendas. But this does not mean Christians should remain silent on theological or moral issues that affect the foundation of our democracy, such as religious liberty, abortion, the sanctity of marriage and the family or any other issue, just because our society deems it political. If Christians do, they are playing into the hands of the kingdom of this world.

Pastor Boyd bases his argument on Matthew 20:24-28. Jesus said, “You know the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave, just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Yes! we are to help people. Yes! we are to pour out our lives for them. Yes! we are to pray for them. Why? Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16). It is not to serve as an end in itself, but so that Christians can create opportunities to point others to eternal salvation in Jesus Christ.

Does this mean we are never to speak the truth about the policies that affect every American life? Do the principles of the Kingdom of God preclude the participation of the faithful in the political processes of our democracy? Does participation in the democratic process contradict the sacrificial aspect of God’s kingdom? Stay tuned.

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