I’ve been thinking about the intersection of the Church and society, and I am increasingly convinced that we (Christians) have gotten off course. We’ve lost the melody, and are stuck, like a scratched record, going nowhere.

I find myself disagreeing even with those who are calling for change. The two variations I typically hear for proposed change are:

1. To create more separation between religion and the public sphere
2. Or to push society to become more “Christian.”

I don’t believe either represents an answer that is actually faithful to the gospel.

Public opinion on Christian involvement in society

In the US, the relationship between the church and society is undergoing a shift from both sides. Overall, the number of people saying society should be influenced by Christianity or built on Christian values is decreasing (Ryan Burge has some interesting data on this). At the same time, churches are increasingly hesitant to evangelize or bring religion into the public sphere. I don’t have broad data handy on that second point, but it’s been my experience as a pastor. In talking about moving the church toward serving and engaging with the neighborhood around it, I had a congregant say to me, “We shouldn’t be telling people what to believe. I know I wouldn’t want that, and we shouldn’t be doing it to others.” Interestingly, I hadn’t been talking about even inviting people to the church, much less “telling them what to believe”; I’d just been talking about finding ways to meet needs in the community.

From both sides, then, a flavor of pluralism that advocates for a sharp distinction between religion and the public sphere seems to be the norm, and increasing if anything.

Christians in their own world

Alongside that, within the Christian sphere, there seems to be an increasing pressure to be “more Christian.” Amid a growing divide between conservatives, liberals, and moderates within Christianity, each group is drawing deeper and deeper lines of what it means to be a “true” Christian. The American emphasis on denominationalism has faded; ‘nondenominational’ is the most common upbringing within Christianity now, and data I’ve collected indicates both pastors and congregant aren’t interested in denominational distinctives. However, in its wake we aren’t seeing unity, but rather a new source of division.

In the town where I live, the largest protestant Christian school just went through a split. I don’t know all of the reasons involved (such things are always very complicated), but from what I’ve heard, one of the central pieces was a narrowing of the definition of what it means to be Christian and the bounds that teachers and students need to stay within. In discussing the events with a friend, they replied, “it’s hard to know how to walk that line of remaining a ‘Christian’ institution without being overly narrow.” That comment, in large part, prompted this blog post, because I think it touches on the heart of the matter: what it means to be Christian (as an individual or an organization) within society.

Flipping it on its head

Indulge me in a side story to illustrate where I’m going.

A few years back, I watched the movie Cabrini when it came out. It was one of the few films I bothered to watch in theaters. (It’s just so much nicer these days to wait and watch movies when they move to streaming and I can watch them on my couch, cuddled up with my pups.) It’s a movie about an Italian nun. After watching (and falling in love with) the movie, I got the biography of her life on audio book and listened to it. While the movie took a few creative licenses, combining some events for the sake of time, etc., overall it seemed to match the biography well.

You see, Cabrini was a frail person. She was rejected from multiple religious orders for being too frail to become a nun. After years of rejection and some mistreatment, she eventually went on to found her own religious order, then traveled to the United States (at a time when Italian immigrants were discriminated against) and founded hospitals and schools not just in the US, but across the Americas. She’s famous for telling the Pope, “The world is too small for what I plan to do.”

While it’s a great story about a woman who overcame massive odds (and I didn’t even share some of the largest obstacles she faced), I bring her up for a different reason. When she founded schools and hospitals, she did so in order that those who were poor and disadvantaged could receive medical care and education. That’s what it meant to her (and to much of Christianity at one time) to found a ‘Christian’ school or hospital: it serves those who can’t pay for it and have no place else to turn.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve turned from ‘Christian schools’ being about reaching out to those who have great need and no way to repay us, to being about building walled cities where our own (often privileged) children can be protected from “the world out there.” We’ve turned Christianity from a beacon of light or a city on a hill, calling all to come in and be fed, to a walled fortress designed to keep the world out.

Returning to its founder

When I read the gospels, especially passages like the sermon on the mount, or when I read through acts, I see a church that wouldn’t recognize much of what we’ve created here in the US that we call “Christian.” What would it take to return to a version of Christianity that Jesus would recognize?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a theologian. I care as much as anyone about right theology, and this isn’t a call to go to the other end of the spectrum and embrace relativism or universalism. But at the same time, if we spend all of our effort building fortresses to keep out the world and everyone whose theology we agree with, we will miss the Kingdom that is vibrant and alive in the streets where people come together and where we care more about serving and caring for our neighbor than building rubrics of who ‘measures up’ and who doesn’t.

How do we get back there? I don’t know. But I know for me, right now, it looks like writing, inviting people into my home, and spending more of my energy loving and caring for others rather than building my own personal kingdom. And I’m trusting that Holy Spirit will show me the way from there.