(Here are my October 29, 2015 remarks at the World Congress of Families IX in Salt Lake City.)
Many religious institutions in America no longer want to defend marriage, family and life because their elites, having transitioned from old liberalism to postmodernism, do not believe in them. Instead many of these elites have actively joined secularism to advocate the deconstruction of marriage and family. Five of 7 Mainline Protestant denominations have rejected natural marriage in favor of same sex rites and other arrangements.
Some, like the Episcopal Church, now endorse transgender clergy.
The United Church of Christ recently has touted a “drag Gospel.”
No Mainline Protestant denomination is pro life. Many are affiliated with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
These anti-family and anti-life stances have helped ensure Mainline collapse. None of these denominations are successfully attracting large numbers of young people. Fifty years ago one of six Americans belonged to these churches. Now fewer than one in 16 do.
Mainline spiritual and ethical failures, above all on marriage, family and life, have metastasized to the Evangelical and Catholic worlds, among other religious communities. Almost everywhere there is explicit or implicit debate over whether to cleave to historic religious teachings or to accommodate secular culture, even though the latter, however politically expedient, inevitably weakens religious communities.
A major threat to vibrant religious defense of marriage, family and life is the ascendancy of the Evangelical Left and even attitudes not on the Left that minimize these issues seen as controversial and not winsome for the Gospel or supposedly lost causes not meriting major effort in social witness. Sometimes the avoidance of these issues is strategic, and sometimes it is doctrinal.
Some Evangelicals instead urge finding common ground with secularism and focus on non-controversial social justice issues. Others counsel pulling inward, focusing on internal church life and not the wider culture.
Most of the Christian and Evangelical world has been relatively silent about assaults on religious liberty over marriage and life involving the Obamacare HHH mandate and cases involving catering same sex rites. Notable exceptions have been Southern Baptist and Catholic bishops, among others, including many in this room.
The drama of Kim Davis in Kentucky this Summer illustrated once again that the culture war against Christian marriage and Christian faith continues apace, with a too often ambivalent response from religious communities. Hillary Clinton, a lifetime Methodist, has announced that Davis should further be jailed. Will traditional believers be expected to step down from all public office and service?
Undoubtedly there will be many more cases of religious persons facing punitive penalties, including imprisonment, for resistance to the LGBTQ and abortion regime.
We can hope the Davis case with others will eventually arouse wider appreciation for the threats against religious liberty and faith itself, not to mention family and life. The ambivalent stance and sometimes even criticism by some Evangelicals, and the brouhaha over the Pope’s visit with Davis, which the Vatican downplayed when challenged, further showcase our challenges.
Despite all the unfortunate pervasive Christian apathy and ineffective witness on marriage and religious liberty, there does some to be improved Christian proactive awareness on abortion, thanks particularly to the video exposes of Planned Parenthood’s fetal parts trafficking. Talking about abortion’s brutality has now become almost socially acceptable, especially in otherwise reluctant Christian circles, which was definitely not the case until relatively recently. Again, Catholic and Southern Baptist pronouncements on the Planned Parenthood scandal have been especially helpful.
And yet, among many Christian young people, including especially on Christian campuses, there is still ongoing reluctance fully to engage abortion, much less marriage and religious liberty, as priority issues for social justice and advocacy. All of these issues are still painted too commonly as unappealing culture war issues that are discomfiting and perhaps impairing evangelistic effectiveness, not to mention social and professional advancement.
Organized Christian political social justice advocacy aimed at young people continues to stress more non-controversial political advocacy like fighting sex trafficking or NGO humanitarian work. Marriage is seen as passé as a public policy issue, religious liberty specifically on behalf of Christians, even for ISIS victims, is seen as self serving for Christian witness, and even on abortion, there is too often more emphasis on therapeutic ministry than on political advocacy and defending the unborn in law.
Indeed, all of the punitive aspects of the civil state, which are central to God’s vocation for government, have become unfashionable or at least uninteresting to much of Christian political witness, except for possibly punishing perpetrators of discrimination against same sex couples. Yet historic Christian teaching says the state has a divinely ordained ongoing, permanent duty to uphold marriage, family and protect all human life, irrespective of fashion and fad.
There is a pervasive lack of awareness in current Christian discourse, not limited to the very young, about historic Christian understandings on the core responsibilities of government. Instead of providing for public order, jailing criminals, and deterring or defeating external aggressors, government is now portrayed in Christian political witness as the all powerful maternal provider who feeds, clothes, heals, educates, and reaffirms, callings that Christianity typically had assigned to parents, families, churches, private philanthropy, civil society and therapists.
Even traditional Christians seem too often ill equipped or clueless about responding to these trends, instead resorting to Libertarian arguments against the threat of Big Government, without describing the state’s core mandate assigned by no less than God Himself.
Addressing this collapse in Christian understanding about God’s purpose for the state is a wonderful but important and almost overwhelming challenge for groups like mine but also for all of us in this room and beyond.
We must first define what the core principles are for Christian social witness to address. The dichotomy now is not so clearly left/right on the spectrum but historic Christian teaching and wider religious understanding versus modern American statism and secular Libertarianism.
All of Christianity and wider religious thought needs deeper ecumenical and interfaith awareness, benefitting from the doctrinal and ethical resources of various traditions. For example, Pope Paul VI’s 1965 Declaration on Religious Freedom, DIGNITATIS HUMANAE, offers wonderful counsel on the government’s duty to protect religious freedom for all as part of the common good. Obviously Catholicism offers superb teaching resources on marriage, family and human life, including abortion and euthanasia. But it seems too often even Catholics forget their own historic insights, and Evangelicals remain even more uninformed about the riches of Christian universal teachings.
Rediscovering and applying other historic Christian resources to explain the first principles of government and Christian social witness especially as they apply to marriage, family and life should be central for us all. This is true for other religious communities as well.
At my group we have been in recent years reminding Evangelicals without a sense of even recent church history of what happened to the Mainline Protestants, lest they follow. Now the job may need to expand, to remind Christians of all stripes and the wider faith community about the historic resources of our common faiths and how they apply today socially and politically.
The Pope’s recent speech to Congress and at Independence Hall about the merits and duties of American democracy seem especially timely when even many conservative Evangelicals are wondering if saying “God bless America” might be idolatrous. The God Whom we worship cares about this society and all societies, in which we are called to work for reform and renewal, above all the defense of society’s cornerstones of marriage, family and life.
The tasks before us remain very large and expanding but also increasingly exciting. What better time to be alive as a Christian or any historic faith community than now! When has it ever been more important to the welfare of all to pint to unchanging transcendent truths about how we live and order our society? So many opportunities for service and challenge, and no excuse ever for boredom or confusion.
We can hope and pray in the fullness of Providence that the Almighty will look back on these days and say of us who have tried to follow Him, this was one of our finest hours in a great social and cultural storm when His truths were most under assault. May He guide us to perseverance and victories ahead for the common good of all people.
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