For some reason it has become popular among many Christian writers to make critical statements about the Christian church as a whole, either the present church or the historical church. My question is whether these statements are fair and good.
If I took the time I could come up with endless examples of sweeping criticisms. I will give one example from a very well-known spiritual formation author. He wrote “We’ve been at this for two thousand years now…Clearly, the church is not making much headway in eliminating what is wrong in the world and making everything right.” Is this historically fair?
The Roman empire was a brutal empire ruled by brutal and often grossly immoral and hedonistic emperors. After Christianity was legally accepted in the 4th century the morality and humanitarianism in the empire greatly improved. Unwanted babies weren’t left to die on hillsides. Bishops like Ambrose had the influence to condemn immoral violent actions by an Emperor and bring them to repentance. You can find much more in the history books (if they aren’t slanted against Christianity.) (I want to note that the author of the quote above also has positive things to say about the visible church.)
The church has given birth to many movements that emphasized loving relationships and helping the needy. Some of the older ones are the Celtic monastic movement, the Franciscans, and the Brethren of the Common Life. Countless modern ones could be named. Christian principles were the driving force behind the European movement towards democracy and the condemnation of destructive authoritarian rulers. These principles were behind the formation of America.
One of the possible reasons for the common misconceptions about church history is the way it is taught in Christian colleges and seminaries. Most church history classes focus primarily on conflicts in church history. This leads to a very slanted view of church history. Real church history is the history of people who were true followers of Christ. Those who weren’t are not part of the history of the church. This includes the many kings and queens who claimed to be Christian but didn’t live it. The real history of the church is about how Christianity changed lives brought compassion and care to others.
Of course it takes a high percentage of authentic Christians in a country to change a whole society, and this doesn’t happen often. But even as a minority Christians have been making a huge difference in the world and private society since the beginning. They treat their families and neighbors better, start schools and hospitals and devote their time to helping the needy. This was happening in the early centuries as well as today. A new Pew study (April 12, 2014) shows that highly religious people donate and give to the poor much more than the rest of the population. In my city an examination by a committee of who was making a difference in the city revealed that Christian groups were doing the majority of the charitable work. Interestingly, the non-Christians in the committee were resistant to what they were observing!
Another example of misleading information is from an article from the staff of Christianity Today, the most influential evangelical magazine in America and usually an excellent news source. The article is a discussion of the new Pew survey on how Christians rank 16 essentials of the faith. They state in the second paragraph: “Pew also dove deeper into more mundane areas of daily life, such as family time, exercise, and recycling. It found that religious Americans are happier than other Americans, but not necessarily better to themselves or society.” This is based on questions in the survey about care for the needy, the environment, and buying from companies that pay a fair wage. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/june/daily-devotion-how-christians-rank-16-essentials-faith-pew.html But the above quote is not really a fair statement. For one thing, the survey asked what is “essential” to being a Christian. This is a confusing question because many people will think of “essential” as “essential to salvation”, though the surveyors did not intend that meaning. Many Christians could improve their care for the needy, the environment, and for unfair wages, but these are not essential to salvation and some will interpret the question that way. Moreover, many non-Christians make social causes their substitute for following God; it eases their conscience (a conscience largely formed by Judeo-Christian values).
But most importantly the findings in the survey actually contradict the idea that “religious Americans…are not necessarily better to…society.” For example, 45% of highly religious volunteered in the past week while only 28% of not highly religious volunteered in the past week. 65% of highly religious donated to the poor in the last week while only 41% of the not highly religious donated to the poor. On gathering with extended family at least monthly, the results were 47% to 30%. When it comes to forgiving those who have wronged you 69% of all Christians think it is essential to being a Christian, 91% of highly religious evangelicals think it is essential, while only 42% of non-Christians think it is essential to being a moral person. These actions all have a big effect on society and highly religious Christians practice them substantially more than others. Thus the statement is both mystifying and mistaken. This is very disappointing and only serves to mislead people about the effects of truly following Jesus and needlessly drives people away from Jesus. We should not make damaging statements unless we are sure. The Pew survey can be found at www.pewforum.org/2016/04/12/religion-in-everyday-life/. A longer Christianity Today article on the survey is at www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2016/april/pew-how-evangelicals-live-out-32-religion-in-everyday-life.html.
In the year 2001, after much research, I began writing a book on the crisis of nominalism in America. It is definitely a huge crisis and not getting much better. But there is a big difference between nominal Christians and Christians who are actually following Jesus. The true followers are making a difference and just saying that we are not “making much headway” or not better to society devalues the the sacrifice and dedication of the many who are making a difference. We need to ask ourselves what America would look like without Christians.
Jesus said few would go through the narrow gate. We can’t really consider mass societal transformation as a norm for the church. We should try to make it happen but if we can’t we should not be surprised. Most people do not want to follow Jesus in any case. They will say the church is critical and hypocritical but those are almost always excuses to be their own lord. They want a self-centered life and they aren’t going to change.
The point is that principles of fairness as well as biblical principles of criticism should keep us from unfair criticism of the church – which is composed of living, breathing people. When we make sweeping statements about the church we need to right, otherwise we are unfairly slandering the saints of God. We also run the risk of falling into the trap of making ourselves feel superior by comparison, or using our criticism to gain followers who are attracted by our denunciations. If we are living our life before God, what does he think about unfair slander of his people by someone who claims to be a Christian?
If we apply a few principles of fairness we can avoid this. First, criticisms should be confined to the actual offenders. Sweeping generalizations should be rare, instead we can refer to a “portion” or “segment” of a group. Humans have a tendency to “split” entire groups into good or bad; this comes from mental laziness and/or the desire to create heroes and villains. This should not be part of our conversations.
Second, we should be accurate. Criticizing people is a serious action; we are saying they did something wrong that is worth public criticism. Therefore, we need to get our facts straight. We can’t repeat a serious criticism just because we heard it from someone else. If it is a historical criticism then it is even more important to do the research. It is easy to criticize people who are dead; repercussions are very unlikely. They can’t defend themselves and prove you mistaken.
For example, if someone wants to criticize the social help that churches provide then they should rely on a fair study. Such a study would examine both the money and volunteer hours churches give for any kind of social help. If one is considering how much churches give per person then the nominal Christians and immature Christians (for example, perhaps one could define this as anyone who hasn’t been regularly attending for at least four years) should be factored out of the calculations. Neither group is a fair reflection of Christians. Also, ministries open to the public that provide services such as addiction recovery or marriage guidance should be included as social help. The value of free meeting space offered to social organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous should also be included in calculating a church’s social help. The monetary value of volunteer hours donated by church members outside the church should also be included as social help by their church. Without these kinds of guidelines it is unfair to compare the social value of help by churches to the value of help by other groups or individuals.
If these kinds of guides were applied to a study I believe we would find that American churches provide more social help than any other association other than the Federal Government. Moreover, it is possible that evangelical churches, broadly defined, are actually providing more social help than so-called “liberal” churches. All this does not include the huge positive socialization that churches provide for society.
Third, try to get both sides of the story. This is similar to the second point. The American justice system is based on the whole idea of allowing both sides to tell their story and letting an impartial jury decide. We need to get both sides of the story if at all possible. This is called “due process” and even unbelievers recognize its centrality.
Fourth, apply the Christian virtues of humility, gentleness, kindness and patience. To be honest many of the more influential Christian thinkers do not exude humility in their writings. I won’t name names because they are also helpful. We need to be sure we have a humble heart and that we are not just tapping in to unfair anger. We need to avoid the temptation to set ourselves up as authority or gather popularity by criticizing others. Criticisms should be gentle with an eye towards friendship if possible. We need to be patient and give people time and space to grow. In other words, we need to be Christian when we criticize Christians.
It is important to air out fair criticisms of trends and movements. But if we don’t do it with a Christian heart then aren’t we just contributing to the kinds of problems we are criticizing?
Part 2 of this post can be found here.
