https://evangelicalfocus.com/multimedia/video/24261/Dan_Strange:_Faith,_work_and_Culture_Wars
There's a lot packed into this 12-minute interview. If you have your eyes and ears open it's rather instructive. But first, consider the context.
Evangelical Focus is not officially 'Lausanne' and the situation in the UK has always been a bit different than on the Continent, and yet this interview with a Gospel Coalition/New Calvinist-style pastor from North London demonstrates that the same spirit reigns in both circles and as such Evangelical Focus is keen to broadcast this interview. There are slight theological and stylistic differences I'm sure, but in the broad strokes of what the Christian life is all about, they're cut from the same cloth. The Lausanne Movement promotes Evangelical Focus and vice versa - and for whatever it's worth, both are connected to the World Evangelical Alliance.
At this point in time the primary focus of all these organisations is cultural engagement and the theology behind it (even if unstated) is Dominionism. Not everyone will agree on what that looks like (especially in a case of Europe vis-à-vis the USA) but the basic principles are omnipresent and represent a sharp break from pre-WWII and 19th century expressions of Evangelicalism on the Continent. Or to put it another way, these groups are all part of the Neo-Evangelical Movement which emerged in the aftermath of the war and has by all accounts transformed the Church. With globalisation, the end of the Cold War, and the rapid ascent of computer technology, a new phase emerged in the 1990's - sometimes also (confusingly) referred to as Neo-Evangelicalism. It seems that after a decade or so the 'neo' can be dropped as the new paradigm becomes normative.
The influence of Francis Schaeffer (standing on the shoulders of men like Abraham Kuyper) as well as a resurgence of Calvinistic theology have given sections of this movement a degree of coherence and focus - a real ideological shot in the arm. Schaeffer's ideas about co-belligerence have also provided an ecumenical basis for these Evangelicals to embrace and incorporate not just the ever-growing Charismatic Movement but Roman Catholicism as well.
As such I was not at all surprised to discover that Strange is tied in with The Gospel Coalition, nor to find videos of his congregation with a drum kit in the background - along with a big emphasis on 'safeguarding'. A lot of these elements seem to go together - it's a dominant style of approaching the question of church. While there is a lot of counter-cultural talk there is at the same time a real spirit of cultural acquiescence and compromise. This is not to say that I don't think children need protecting but I reject the idea that the Church relies on the world's categories and affirmation in terms of processes implemented, 'background checks', or the notion that churches need to appoint 'safeguarding coordinators' and that sort of thing.
If I can't trust the people I go to church with, then just what does that say? And to find the trust in a certification issued by the state? This smells rotten to me. What does that say about our concepts of fellowship and communion? And if the church is so big that I can't know the people I go to church with? Do our children need to be cordoned off in another type of church gathering? Is that from the New Testament or the world's models and approaches to such questions? In light of these questions maybe we need to re-think our ecclesiology, but I realize this flies in the face of modern numbers-focused Evangelicalism, and the ethos of The Gospel Coalition, and New Calvinism in general.
Condemn the abuse of children but also condemn the state's interference and the culture it fosters. The UK's modern liberal state has encouraged degeneracy and the Church seems powerless in its response and its ability to understand what has happened and why. You would think Nonconformists in the UK would want nothing to do with the state but like all Evangelicals they seem to crave its recognition and sanction. They want a place on the high street and abhor the notion of being relegated to the underground - the place for sects and other social heretics. Or you might say a place where the pilgrims, exiles, and strangers are found.
At only two minutes in, Strange makes statements that effectively assume the validity of Christendom and thus the conversation is already off the rails. The 'worldview' he partially celebrates, that supposedly lost people are able to live by, is not in fact Christian at all. And rather than try and bolster this false paradigm, the Church would be better served calling it out and exposing it as a fraud.
But to repeat an already emphasized point, this would turn the Church into a sect - the very antithesis of what post-war Evangelicalism, Lausanne, and movements like New Calvinism are all about.
And so we are trapped on a kind of carousel.
All this talk of being in a post-Christian situation, or Modernism being a kind of Christian heresy is nonsense. The truth is the Church entered a post-Christian heretical/False Church situation with Constantine and apart from small pockets of resistance it has never recovered from this. The Magisterial Reformation just multiplied it - creating a parallel Christendom that resulted in just as many errors and evils.
Strange thinks Christian values are still present in society? Where? With Enlightenment liberalism? Economics? Does he think the British Empire was Christian? One strains to find the religion of the New Testament being present anywhere in the framing of this discussion.
Dominionism without being named as such is the assumption at work when we reach the four-minute mark. Certainly our faith shapes our lives and yet Strange is asserting that the Gospel (or Kingdom) is somehow part of our work and cultural interaction. This is to re-define the Kingdom in a way foreign to the New Testament. Instead of a Kingdom that is within us and invisible to the eyes of the lost, the realm of the Holy Spirit - the Dominionist Kingdom is about tangible, tactile, and accessible civilisational advancement and thus (whether they choose to admit it or not) it's about mammon, politics, and war as well.
Once again the passages about eating, drinking, and doing all things to the glory of God (1 Cor 10.31, Col 3.17) are removed from their context. A closer read reveals something quite different. These passages are manipulated by Dominionists as a kind of blanket affirmation for all kinds of work and cultural pursuits - an affirmation that sacralizes or sanctifies these tasks. The text reveals these passages are about self-denial, other-orientedness, and Kingdom-mindedness. They are exhortations of restraint, submission to Providence, circumstance, and suffering. They are not world-affirming blank checks (or cheques) to pursue culture to the utmost. This point is revisited at the very end of the interview when Strange speaks of subduing the Earth (the so-called Cultural Mandate which fails to properly take the Fall, Flood, or the meaning of the Second Adam's Parousia into account), and with it the Magisterial Reformation's doctrine of Vocation which seeks to sacralize all work and all of life - which historically resulted in the secularization of Christianity. Once again, nothing has been learned from history and the Evangelical movement all but throws itself back on to these pathways which led its forebears to destruction and will certainly lead this rather shallow and superficial movement to the same end - and soon I might add.
I don't want to be automatically or unnecessarily negative in response to his suggestion of a 'point of contact' but it's hard not to wince when I hear Evangelicals speak this way. It smacks of both compromise and the kind of 'creativity' he invokes smacks of marketing and manipulation. It is disheartening to say the least to realize just how much of the American spirit (which is spiritually cancerous) has been disseminated across the globe and how many have taken its mammon-driven ethos and pragmatism and confused it with Christianity.
Strange thankfully tempers his statement about casting down idols but still falls short of what Paul is suggesting in a passage like 2 Corinthians 10. There is no suggestion that such endeavours translate into culture war and attempts by Christians to be cultural leaders, or a kind of vanguard for the coming transformation. There is no argument to be made that Christians should try to capture politics or dominate academia, media, or the like. The world will hate us and persecute us. We are fools and our message foolishness. There is no way to make it palatable let alone attractive to the lost world. Well there is a way - but it involves compromise and the undermining of the faith.
These people don't seem to understand that while pagan states such as Rome will persecute the Church the greatest opposition has always come from so-called Christian states which hate nothing more than Christians (Bible in hand) condemning their idolatry and syncretism with the idols and ideals of Babylon. This is what Strange is in fact advocating - the recapturing and appropriation of Babylon. Their cheap counterfeit cross has been knocked of the Tower of Babel and we need to fight to put it back. What a waste. What a fool's errand.
He hopes to do this with gentleness and respect, and yet pull down the idols? And how is this accomplished apart from political influence and the attempt to take over cultural institutions and force others out? This is of course best accomplished with not only numbers but large sums of money and this is where the Church falls into mammon worship and loses its way. All of these groups are about forming alliances with power and the quest for standing and respectability within the culture. This is why (in part) you see Evangelicals scrambling to sign up as 501c-3 non-profit charities in the United States (along with background checks) as well as the 'Safeguarding' regime at Strange's church in the UK.
The inescapability of the quest for political power emerges as we near the eight-minute mark though Strange tries to dance around it a bit. Society must be transformed, Christ's Lordship is extra-covenantal or rather the covenant is something with the world and beyond the Church - thus redefining the role of the Holy Spirit and how the Kingdom is defined. Politics play a part in this transformation though he wants to say it's not exclusively so - and yet in the end - it is all about politics. What he really means is that the groundwork has to be laid before the political changes come. That way when the legislation is put into place, it doesn't seem like a top-down imposition but rather something that is in keeping with a social consensus. In other words the debate is not about the goal - which is political mastery. The debate within Evangelicalism is only over the method - whether top-down or something that is ostensibly grass-roots and democratic.
It's all fine political theory but it's not within the scope of New Testament views of the Kingdom or the eschatological existence of the Church. It is instead a hybrid between Dominionist thought and Classical Liberalism - a paradigm worked out by Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and other underminers of the faith. Democracy sounds so good to people and yet it only works in the context of social consensus - at which point it's hardly necessary. This is strange to me as this view is not in keeping with Scripture, history, Church History - and in this case it's certainly not in keeping with British history and the many contradictions and tensions within its post-Glorious Revolution political settlement and the rise of its empire.
In terms of 'making faith magnetic' one is struck by the therapeutic tone - once again an export from the United States and its culture of psychologized Christianity. Significance and connection, the question of identity, the recognition of a need for deliverance... all these framings smack of compromise with the world and the adoption of its lexicon and categories. Rather than bring the gospel to the lost world, this is typical of Evangelicalism's attempt to package the gospel in order to 'meet the needs' of people. It's as if you become a Christian because you're going to get something of out it. But this is not the gospel of the New Testament wherein we are broken by sin, and come on our knees crying out for grace and so desirous of truth that we are willing to suffer and die for it. The call to take up the cross is not a popular one in Evangelical circles. Its glossy gospel of world-affirmation, status, mammon, and therapy have little place for it.