The clearest and most comprehensive analysis describing the relationship of the church to society has been H. Richard Niebuhr’s seminal book, Christ and Culture (Harper and Brothers N.Y. 1951) While relying on Niebuhr’s analysis, these columns seek to look at the data from a more restricted perspective. My simlpler analysis sees the difference between viewing the church’s essential nature as embodying doctrine or as embodying a lived-out ethic. It is here that the current division between conservative and progressive Christians has often taken shape.
Considering what has been my consistent position, it would be easy for me to say that when the church has based its commitments on doctrine, it has been a curse, and when it has based its commitments on ethically-based action, it has been a blessing. A trusted friend has suggested that he is committed to the religion of Jesus but not to the religion about Jesus. That probably captures my usual perspective as well.
However, I am aware that many faithful believers live out of a combination of faith and action, or doctrine and ethics. The role of the church as it interfaces with society might well include both an appreciation of who Jesus was and what Jesus taught.
The Biblical account seems focused on this god/man made flesh, born of a virgin, suffered, died and was resurrected, and on a very human teacher who healed, welcomed the outsider and lived out of what we call the golden rule. Long before Jesus’ ministry, this perspective was often proclaimed by Israel’s prophets, and through the voices and works of those of other religions as well as those with no religion.
Jesus encapsulated his message in his declaration that his ministry centered on. “good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and liberty to the oppressed.”
The issue, however, that forces me to lean more to one side than to the other revolves around religious exclusiveness. Absolutism can be found in many of the world's faith claims. When any group of religious believers declare that they exclusivly possess the divine will and purpose, the result is almost always socially destructive. We can clearly see this in the Islamic claim that God’s authentic and exclusive will has been revealed to Mohammad and written in the Koran. There can be no other sanctified path to God. Islamic fundamentalism then becomes a blight on societies it dominates.
Just as clearly, when Christians hold that God’s love is limited to those who call Jesus ‘Lord’, their role in society tends to be destructive. This exclusivity is exacerbated with the claim that all others are lost and destined for an eternity in a fiery hell. Looking on how this declaration describes the relation of the church to the rest of the world, the results are clear. When the church or groups of Christians claim they possess the exclusive deposit of truth, and hold the Bible as the final and inerrant word of God, Christianity becomes a societal curse. Go back and take any of the historic episodes I have described in this series of columns, and you will see the negative impact of Christian exclusivism.
(I am not evaluating the truth of faith statements, only the societal results)
On the other hand, when the Church or Christians have focused on the religion Jesus articulated through his life and ministry, the results have most often been healing the wounds of a troubled world and offering hope to the world’s non-persons. Faithfulness to what Jesus taught has blessed not only Christians, but also the lame, the halt the blind, the poor, the left out, the pariahs, the nobodies wherever they have lived.
So we Christians are called to decide whether our lives are committed only to the religion about Jesus and its exclusive claims, or to the religion of Jesus and its call for inclusion, peace and justice.
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