Part Three:  Why Apologetics Plays a Crucial Role in Today’s “Cultural War”  *

Until fairy recent times, the Christian worldview dominated American culture. To a large degree, Christian principles and values underlaid governmental policies and the standards for judicial, educational, ethical, and social behavior in this country. This is not true today. People have become apathetic, even indifferent, to immoral behavior that a few decades ago was universally recognized as evil and condemned. Vulgarity and violence flood our entertainment. Cheating is commonplace in our universities, as is corruption and greed in government and our great corporations. Our judicial system has legalized abortion, gay marriage, and most forms of pornography.

As a religious and ethical worldview, Christianity has been under siege for more than one hundred years. It has been effectively shoved off center stage as the guiding moral and spiritual light in America. In its place, the reigning worldview is godless, human-centered, naturalistic, and largely immoral secular humanism.

Throughout the past hundred-plus years, as this cultural war escalated and Christian losses mounted, the church has responded in three ways.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many seminaries attempted to accommodate the prevailing intellectual climate that favored naturalistic science and Biblical criticism. They recast the church into the image of the secular culture—and their efforts failed tragically. Theological liberalism infiltrated most, if not all, mainline denominations, destroying the fundamental beliefs that formerly identified Christians.

As a result, many churches today are little more than social clubs. The Bible is no longer considered to be divine revelation. Jesus has been demoted to being a nice guy who offers good advice on how to live a happy, quasi-spiritual life. He is no longer God incarnate, the loving, yet judging, Lord and Savior.

During the early twentieth century, this liberalization of American churches led to a spiritual civil war. A large segment of Christendom responded by isolating and separating themselves, not only from the liberal churches but from secular society as a whole.

This response also failed. It marginalized conservative Christians into becoming a distinct subculture within the broader secular society and ushered in the birth of radical fundamentalism. Many churches became anti-intellectual. They became dogmatic and legalistic in doctrinal beliefs. Christianity came to be identified with strict prohibitions, and the mark of a true Christian was adherence to rigid codes of conduct.

Unfortunately, the fallout from the fundamentalist movement led to conservative Christianity losing much of its voice and influence in American culture. Christians became viewed as an anti-intellectual, ideologically exclusive, radical fringe group that was out of touch with mainstream America—an image that persists to this day.

The third response to the cultural war is probably the most prevalent today. Increasing numbers of Christians, including evangelicals, sanction a dualistic approach to life. They maintain well-defined boundaries between the spiritual and the secular components of their lives, and function within each compartment according to the activities in which they engage.

For example, during church-related functions they maintain strict Biblical values. In discussing such prominent moral issues of our times as abortion and gay marriage, they endorse Biblical values. They support missionaries, encourage evangelism, and give generously to Christian causes. However, at school and work, and while enjoying entertainment, these same Christians behave according to secular values. They compartmentalize the religious and secular aspects of their lives into separate, independent categories. The religious side is privatized and confined to church. The secular side governs everything else. It’s not uncommon for Christians to go to church on Sunday morning and movies in the afternoon that are full of gratuitous sex, vulgarity, and graphic violence—and fail to see any inconsistencies with their Biblical values.

The sad fact is, none of these three approaches to secularism—accommodation, isolation, or dualism—will win (or have won) any battles in the cultural war. Certainly the early church did not use these strategies as it fought its own culture war with the Romans. The early Christians did not accommodate, did not isolate, and did not promote living dualistic lives. The early Christians engaged the culture, and through God’s power successfully transformed most of the pagan Roman world into a Christianized world. ©

Next week’s blog article will explore three major areas in which apologetics is most beneficial in today’s post-Christian, secular culture.

* This blog article is derived from the introduction to my book The Christian Combat Manual; Helps for Defending Your Faith: A Handbook for Practical Apologetics (AMG Publishers), which can be ordered through most outlets.