We can speak of a Social Accommodationist Triad or SAT. There are many aspects of social life that could be plugged into this equation but in particular it could be argued that three powerful socially transformative forces have been at work in the post-WWII period – and these forces have worked symbiotically to shape and affect the culture.
As Biblical New Testament Christians not invested in the
culture, our interest in this phenomenon is limited and even detached – or
ought to be. We cannot hide from the culture. To a degree we need to understand
it and the context in which we live. This will help to us interact with the
world around us, the messages we receive, and the values which challenge our
own. In order to witness to the world we don't adapt our message but in order
to interact with individuals there is a degree of wisdom in taking some time to
understand the ideas and context which shape our present milieu.
Likewise people come into the Church bringing their baggage
with them. Christians are out in the world, living and working. Some compromise
in how they approach this – an easy thing to do as the lines are not always
clear and many of the necessary judgments we make in daily life and life
choices have a degree of subjectivity. So like it or not, we all are (to some
degree) interacting with the world and being shaped by it. And this doesn't
even touch on questions concerning pop culture, television, music and the like.
In no way am I suggesting that we eschew these things wholesale. We see
extremes at work in the Church – extreme embrace of the world and extreme
separatism to the point of being incapable of social interaction. The Church
constantly falls into the two extremes of libertinism and legalism – both of
which must be rejected. Wisdom is what
is required and yet is consistently found to be lacking. And certainly we are
called to be salt and light – though this profound concept is usually
misinterpreted and abused, twisted into a rationalisation for worldliness and
compromise.
Utilising such flawed hermeneutics, Dominionism which now
dominates the Evangelical and Confessional scene has misread the New Testament
and believes it is the task of the Church to conquer and transform culture.
There is a spectrum to this set of beliefs to be sure. There are many hybrids
and other positions which are more radical in how they would go about this. But
consistently, the separatist approach once seen among Fundamentalists and
dissenters of old has disappeared and while these groups were not always right
in their methods and practice, and in other cases sidetracked by the
aforementioned legalism – the libertine approach has definitely won the day.*
And this is because Dominionism demands the culture be
transformed. There are no parts of the culture that are left to their own as it
were – realms that Christians simply say, "That's the world and has
nothing to do with us." This is despite the fact that this is the New
Testament position presented over and over again in the apostolic epistles.
Called to be strangers and pilgrims we are not invested in the world system and
cannot be. We don't even judge those who are outside the covenant,
understanding that the wicked will always triumph in this age and our hope is
found only in the age to come – which is why we lay up our treasures there – in
heaven.
The quest to shape and transform culture has sidetracked the
Church and led it down many wayward paths. It has compromised its ethics in the
realm of the sword and the coin – the foundation stones of societies and this
is especially true when it comes to bestial powers like the empires that
emerged in the Renaissance and Enlightenment West. Sadly, myriads of Christians
have 'thrown in' with these powers, baptised them in all their bestial
degeneracy and have functionally apostatised as a result.
Since the sacral dream of a Christianised society is (in New
Testament terms) an impossibility – and as we are called to be a remnant
following a narrow persecuted path, the only way the sacral project can remain
viable is to redefine terms. And so this is pursued with vigour. And it starts
with the gospel itself which reveals the accursed nature of this endeavour. In
addition to bringing another gospel, the very concept of Christian is
redefined. The transformative sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit that causes
one to live a renewed life of justification, repentance, adoption and to
experience union with Christ is redefined so that it can be applied in
sociological and cultural terms. The New Testament knows nothing of a Christian
nation or society. The very idea is a contradiction in terms. God establishes
no covenants with nations in the New Testament order – apart from the Holy
Nation, the Church, the Body of Christ. Only the Church falls under the
designation of His Holy Realm.
God reigns to be sure in a providential sense and yet as long
as this age endures (which the time is short as we are (eschatologically
speaking) in the Last Days), this world is under the aegis of Satan. His defeat
has been proclaimed, spiritually speaking he has even been defeated – but the
final assault that comes with the Parousia-Apocalypse has been put on hold as
it were, delayed, paused – so that God in his longsuffering mercy can save the
elect through the means of the Church, which in doing so bears witness against
this perishing world and glorifies God by taking up the cross and emulating the
sufferings of its Saviour.
Dominionism functionally if not actually denies this
narrative and as such cannot abandon any sphere of society – in fact the
movement erroneously declares all spheres to be holy or demands the Church
seeks to make them so. The Scriptures do not speak to the sanctification of the
various spheres of society and so utilising fallacious deduction and inference,
speculative philosophy (disguised as theology) is employed in order to forge an
epistemological synthesis – a syncretism erroneously referred to as Christian
Worldview.
But in every case society gets the upper hand. For all their
efforts the world is lost and thinks and behaves as such. The movement can put
a kind of veneer on society but this is not only deceptive but dangerous as it
confuses the thinking of the Church and effectively causes its members to let
down their guard. They lose their vigilance and antithesis and instead are
caught up in the cultural struggles and the many political compromises that are
necessary to wielding power in a complex world.
Latitudinarianism sets in even among Christians that would
(rightly) condemn the concept in ecclesiastical terms. And yet functionally in
terms of Christian Sociology (itself something of an oxymoron) they embrace the
concept with zeal.
As expected the Church's identity becomes confused and
instead of influencing and transforming culture the culture begins to influence
and transform the Church. This happened in late antiquity with the
Constantinian Shift, it happened at the time of the Reformation and again at
the Enlightenment and it's happening today. But the difference today is this –
the situation is far more desperate. The numbers of conservative
Bible-believing Christians have in reality grown fewer and yet now this already
small movement has been completely infected by this tendency and impulse and
there are very few remaining voices of dissent. In other words the leaders and
institutions being looked to as 'conservative' are in many cases deeply and
even existentially compromised and within another generation we're going to
find very few voices left that are still standing for Biblical Christianity.
There will be many that proclaim to do so but the student of the Scripture will
know otherwise.
In the West a very powerful triad has been at work. This has
come in the form of psychology, feminism, and divorce. These elements feed off
one another. Once rejected by the conservative churches, these ideas and the
social trends they generate have been not only embraced but sanctified and the
consequence is that even ostensibly conservative groups and individuals are
selling out wholesale to the world and the generation that succeeds them is (in
this author's opinion) likely to abandon Christianity altogether – or at least
anything that represents some connection to historic forms of Christian
orthodoxy.
Feminism has not been properly dealt with because the
movement while finding its origins in Enlightenment Humanism was in fact primarily
and functionally motivated by the social crisis generated by the Industrial
Revolution. Because of the rise of Communism in the 20th century,
once socially conservative and yet sometimes centrist and even Left-leaning Churches
made a hard Right-wing turn and have come to embrace unbridled Capitalism.
Though unsupported by Scripture both in terms of its ethics and its theory,
this move has pushed many (if not most) churches to put a very positive spin on
the Industrial Revolution, market economics and all the evils these forces have
unleashed. Feminism was divorced (no pun intended) from that context and dealt
with in isolation and thus not properly understood. And yet it found other
means of ingress into Christian thought and community life.
Capitalism and the consumerism it produced along with the
Industrial Revolution gave rise to the modern concept of the individual. The
process had began with the Enlightenment epistemology and its concepts of
rights and freedoms and yet these were given a practical import when it came to
industrial urban life which divorced (and yes, alienated) individuals from the
social structures that had existed beforehand – the village life and so forth.
The larger family structure was broken, the individual's place in the social
structure was fragmented and people were faced with isolated living in a cold,
hard, cash-driven economy. The privileges and benefits of the old agrarian
order with access to water, fuel, and food were removed and a different kind of
life arose. To no one's surprise it fragmented families and individuals and led
to a breakdown. Relationships between husband and wife were strained and
redefined as was that of parent and child and how the family and individuals
related to the society around them. People were treated like commodities and
isolated into marketing blocks, conditioned to consume industrial products and
eventually to define themselves by them.
These upheavals were addressed by many in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries and yet few of those voices were Christian and those
that were have either been lost or 'spun' by disingenuous propagandists in our day.
The Industrial Revolution can be described as a great evil
and yet even that judgment remains complicated as in some respects it was a
necessary development and not all that it produced was evil. But all things
considered it should not be celebrated. It cannot be undone and so there's
little point it trying to undo it as some Christians have (and I'm not only
speaking of groups like the Amish), and yet it should never be embraced
wantonly or in a blind fashion.
The broken family, urban life, and the alcoholism, financial
strain and domestic violence produced by the Industrial Revolution gave rise to
feminism but in the twentieth century the Church refused to address the
economic aspects of these questions and thus to a large degree remained blind
to the real forces at work.
Feminism certainly fueled divorce which began to be embraced
wholesale by Christians in the 1980's. The Christian Right had thrown in with a
divorcee president who was their champion. Earlier generations would have
deemed him an immoral and unsuitable person to ally with but the movement had
been blindsided by the 1960's. Failing to understand that the 1960's were but
the climax or crisis point of social forces that had been at work for decades,
the leaders of the movement forged a narrative of desperation and the need for
swift political action. This laid the groundwork for a myriad of compromises –
the true fallout from these choices are only now truly being felt.
Feminism was met with hostility and yet the forces which
opposed it were in many respects feminist influenced and of a similar bent. It
was part of the practical and tactical means needed to combat the movement.
Opposition all too often results in triangulation and that's what we have
repeatedly seen in the Evangelical movement. Aspects of the enemy's doctrine
are embraced and yet re-cast and re-framed in order to make the less than
stellar opposition or 'victory' seem more impressive or absolute. It's an old
political and diplomatic trick that while wily and cunning is not suitable in
terms of a Christian approach to doctrine or ethics. But the political Church
learns from its political masters – all too well it seems.
Feminism was demonised and rightly so but on a practical
level many of its tenets were being embraced not because of some kind of hard
commitment to ideology but due to economic realities. By the 1970's the US and
indeed many Western economies were smarting. The American dominated order was
changing. Germany and Japan had risen from the ashes and were presenting a
manufacturing challenge to US dominance. Inflation driven by the energy crisis,
US war debt and other factors generated economic troubles. Civil strife and the
nature of US Federalism also generated instability as people and even
manufacturing were on the move bolstering some regions of the country and
devastating others.
People were struggling to pay their bills and while some
women went to work driven by ideological principle, others went out of
pragmatics. People began to like the extra income but this too led to inflation
and before long families were trapped and began to 'need' the second income
just to survive. In the 1980's (when the credit card culture began to grow)
people were living beyond their means to maintain a lifestyle and this
lifestyle would grow increasingly decadent as the 1990's progressed.
Churches preaching against feminism were fighting a losing
battle because to do so would mean challenging the Capitalist narrative and the
nature of the US economic order. This should have happened, but few were
willing to do so. Remember the people in the pews were also heavily
propagandised by the Cold War narrative. I was one of them and remember that
time very well.
For churches that had wed their Americanism and their
Christianity such a needed and Biblical line had become almost unthinkable.
Feminism was decried but quietly it was embraced by means of moving the goal
posts. There were always radicals that could be used as a foil and so while
feminism was championed it could be contrasted with more radical forms.
Feminism was once about equality and that was condemned as anti-Scriptural.
Today's Feminism promotes a preference for women and a subservient role for
men. And so the Church can embrace the formerly condemned position of equality
(and the rejection of domesticity) and seem conservative when juxtaposed with
the modern positions, its assumptions and arguments. And yet who has won?
Clearly feminism has triumphed. The culture didn't change but the Church
certainly did.
Today, feminism has been embraced wholesale by the Church and
is no longer questioned. In fact it is largely celebrated by revisionist historians
and activists that have sought to appropriate Suffragettes such as Susan B
Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton – figures once despised by Fundamentalists
and Evangelicals. And this was true as recently as the 1980's as I and others
well remember. Today, they're Christian 'pro-life' heroes – a dishonest and
deceptive reading of these women and their context.
Feminism also fueled divorce and this was further exacerbated
by the growing influence of psychology and its non- and anti-Christian focus
and methods of dealing with human problems (i.e. sin and life in a fallen
world). The Church which through its transformationalist ethos opened itself up
to syncretism had by the late 1970's began to embrace psychology – which it had
once repudiated. It was in the air and the water (so to speak) in the 1970's.
It permeated pop culture and when fed into the matrix of feminism it proved
quite destructive. In the face of 'fulfillment, authenticity and self-esteem',
divorce became common and the state responded to the democratic and populist
impulse as the practical realities of finances, custody, and even individual
rights could not function within a culture that heavily restricted divorce. The
other practical reality was that people were functionally abandoning the
institution and simply living together. The shame that had once existed was
revealed to be something of a veneer as anyone who bothers to read deeply on US
culture and society will learn. The difference was this – what once existed but
was relegated to the back streets (as it were) became mainstream and accepted.
For many this was not a real transformation but simply the abandonment of
hypocrisy – which itself becomes something of a societal cancer – as the
Prohibition experiment revealed.
As a Christian I cannot share in the pragmatic
divorce-sanctioning ethos, let alone the triumph of secularism but at the same
time I can acknowledge that the status quo was farcical and harmed not only
society but the Church which had so closely wed itself to the social order. The
Church was part of the charade and had for generations damaged its testimony in
the eyes of the lost world. The world will always hate us but it should be for
the offense of the gospel message and Kingdom obedience, not because the Church
represents one of the key institutions of society and all the corruption that
necessarily goes with it.
Psychological crisis was in part fueled by the alienation and
cold individualism of modern techno-industrial life and the kind of fragmented
society it produced – of which suburbia played a part. Feminism dovetailed with
this trend and divorce resulted from it. The embrace of psychology by the
Church only made the problem worse as is so clearly seen in contemporary
marriage counseling and the growing tendency toward laxity and rationalisation
on questions of divorce and remarriage. Self-denial is not in the American DNA
and the Church has more or less accommodated this reality. Psychology was but a
means to rationalise worldliness and even today few pay attention at the way in
which psychology undermines the claims of Scripture. Sola Scriptura is a hollow
concept in the face of Confessionalism. How much more when concepts such as
psychology are embraced? They have even re-shaped basic ecclesiology as many
churchly and elder-oriented tasks have been removed and handed over to
'professionals' trained in good syncretistic or even rankly secular fashion.
The ugly truth is this – the Church could not seriously
challenge these forces and remain culturally and politically viable. It should
have and if that end result was that America was no longer dominated by
Christianity and that Christianity was reduced to a small and seemingly
insignificant portion of the population – that should have been the course
taken. Fidelity and obedience honour God and such a reality would have simply
revealed the true situation (that American society is not, never has been and
indeed cannot be, Christian) and made for a small but strong and vibrant
Church.
But instead the road of compromise was taken and
overshadowing all of this is the question of the mammon. Money fuels church
institutions and thus numbers are required. Political influence requires money
and politicians look for allies that will bring them numbers – i.e. votes and
campaign contributions.
A faithful Church will be a small one and thus low numbers of
people mean a lot less in terms of money. Institutional, political, and social
influence and status will be non-existent. The Church will be like the Early
Church, the medieval dissenters, and even the nonconformists and dissenters of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such an option is unthinkable to those
who equate gospel 'success' with cultural influence and political power – in
other words to those compromised by mammon.
Power and mammon go hand in hand. They cannot be separated.
Do not the rich use the power of their money to wield the institutions of
society as weapons against the weak? From the courts to control of the
financial order they use these systems as forms of exploitation and violence –
an equation clearly made in Proverbs 4, something all the Christian financial
teachers who profess to love the Proverbs seem to miss.
You cannot serve God and Mammon. Again, you cannot serve God
and Mammon. And again, you cannot serve God and Mammon. The Western Church and
the Evangelical movement didn't listen and trapped by this idol – they have
been slain by it. The guardians abandoned their posts, the shepherds were
revealed to be hirelings or turned out to be wolves in sheep's clothing. They
opened the door to the world and it found many pathways into the Church's
ranks. The dark triad of feminism, divorce, and psychology has proven to be devastating
and has radically reshaped ethics, epistemology, and ecclesiology. Institutions
(such as schools and denominations) which have constructed their narratives
around their stalwart faithfulness are not exempt and have allowed these forces
to overrun them.
Never understanding (or bothering to understand) the social
forces that fueled these movements and social trends, the blind leaders of the
blind have led the Church into a ditch. They have betrayed Christ and have
brought wrath and judgment on the people of God.
Come out from among them and be ye separate.
----
*And this even largely true in circles where separatism is believed to have been embraced. It is not uncommon to find a separatist ethos in terms of dress and pop culture even while the world is embraced and accommodated in terms of finances and politicking – which eventually comes full circle in terms of life ethos.