Part Eight of The World Beyond the Church

Throughout the past hundred-plus years, as the cultural war between Christians and the secular world escalated—and Christian losses mounted—the church has responded in three ways. The first two were dismal failures, and the present one is no better. The following is how we got to this third ineffective response today.

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 many of the fundamental beliefs that formerly identified Christianity.

In the early twentieth century—as a response to the liberalization of American churches—a large segment of Christendom responded by separating themselves from the liberal churches as well as secular society as a whole (the so-called “Fundamentalist Movement”). This response also failed. It marginalized conservative Christians into an isolated subculture within the broader secular society, which contributed to Christianity losing much of its voice and influence in American culture. Christians became viewed as anti-intellectual and ideologically exclusive, a radical fringe group out of touch with mainstream America—an image that persists to this day.

The third response to the cultural war is the most prevalent today. Increasing numbers of Christians now live dual lives. They maintain well-defined boundaries between the spiritual and the secular aspects of their lives, and function within each according to the activities in which they engage.

During church-related functions they maintain strict biblical values. In the prominent moral issues of our time, such as abortion and homosexuality, they endorse biblical values. They support missionaries, encourage evangelism, and donate to Christian causes. However, at school and work and in 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 and Christian activities. The secular side governs virtually everything else. As one example, it’s not uncommon for Christians to go to church on Sunday morning and watch movies and television programs 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 will win (or have won) any battles in the cultural war. The early church did not use these strategies as it fought its own culture war with the Romans. They did not accommodate, isolate, or live double lives. The early Christians engaged the culture and through God’s power eventually transformed most of the pagan Roman world into a Christianized world.

If the church is to have victories in today’s escalating cultural war, it must begin with each of us individually. We must identify areas of our lives that compromise our values as Christ followers, renounce them, and lead the transformed lives God expects (Rom. 12:2) and will empower us to do (2 Pet. 1: 3). We can then more successfully engage the secular culture, be more efficient in lifestyle evangelism, and create opportunities for sharing the Gospel and engaging in productive apologetic discussion. ©

NEXT WEEK I’ll begin a new series on scientific evidence that refutes Darwinism while supporting creation.