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The Manifesto for the emerging Christian counterculture?
As I read the main section, here, I began to notice, or "recognize" some signs of things that scare me a little, and I notice that Francis Schaefffer is like a patron saint of this site, and I see the "evangelical intellectualism" and the underlying almost smug assertion that "the truth" is forthcoming. Read on. It's well stated, just a bit scary in places, and I will explain why afterwords.
The Manifesto:
As we enter the twenty-fi rst century, in 2001, thoughtful Christians stand in awe of the tragedy looming all around us. The real cultural crisis, that is:
today s Christian culture is destroying Christianity.
By todays Christian culture we mean the vast network of people ministries, businesses, bookstores, magazines, musicians, TV & radio programs and the like who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ today. While individual differences certainly exist among them, a consistant pattern is easily detected :
the culture it represents is indistinguishable from the world it seeks "to save." It is worldly at its very core.
Today s Christian culture so resembles the world, that standing contra mundum against the world, in opposition to its culture would amount to standing against itself. Yet that is the state of things. And, what is most tragic, it has borne a multitude of misled, deluded "disciples" who are scripturally illiterate and spiritually dull. How has this happened? It is really quite simple:
in an effort to be infl uential, Christians have been trying to buy their own legitimacy from the surrounding culture by compromising the Christian world and life view.
Rather than sustaining a moral and intellectual antithesis to that culture, they have bought into italmost completely. The result is a cascade of compromise on almost every front:
compromising Scriptures unique authority;
compromising the biblical gospel;
compromising the call to Christian discipleship;
compromising the nature of true spirituality;
compromising the New Testament order of fellowship;
compromising the ethics of the Kingdom of God.
(Ironically, this has not been lost on the surrounding culture Christian s sought to infl uence in the fi rst place.)
So what must be done about it?
As Christians, we must turn from this posture of compromise and af fi rm the distinctive Christian world and life view set forth in Scripture.
At its core Christianity is a countercultural, revolutionary movement.
As such, "Christian culture" ought to stand against the corrupt culture of the world as "salt and light" (Matt 5:13-16). This will only be accomplished when todays Christian culture so-called "Christian" ministries, businesses, bookstores, magazines, musicians, TV & radio programs and the like begins to engage the truth seriously, practice the truth without compromise, and demonstrate the truth in real terms.
We must engage the truth seriously
We must bring a clear, well-de fi ned, content-rich Christian message back into the orbit of our Christian culture, placing an emphasis on what is true as over against what is not true.
The key here is antithesis. If a statement is true, its opposite is not true. We must act upon, witness, and proclaim this fact: what is contrary to Gods revealed propositional truth is not true, whether it is couched in New Age terms or traditional Christian terms with altogether new meanings. All the areas of our life, especially as we participate in Christian fellowship, must be affected. The early church allowed itself to be condemned, both by the secular and religious authorities. They said, "We must preach, we must witness publicly; we must obey God rather than man." They did not succumb to pressure to accommodate their message to please the culture around them. No, they practiced antithesis.
How else would they maintain a credible witness?
We must practice the truth without compromise
This is the time to show a generation which thinks that the concept of truth is unthinkable that we do take truth seriously. This will only happen if Christians are living out what they confess to believe with integrity what the Apostle John called, walking in the truth. 2 John 4 This means that our fellowships must foster direct, open, honest,transparent dealings with God and with each other the confessing of real, personal sins; the acknowledgement of weaknesses and temptations; the carrying forward of each others burdens to promote the purity of our lives and fellowships.
We must demonstrate the truth in real terms
Our fellowships must be real communities: places in which others see our life together as something of beauty; something reflecting the beauty God intended for humanity at the beginning. Too many of our churches are really teaching stations and activity generators. The "sharing of life" in community has had little place.
We must maintain scriptural integrity, standing against those teachings and practices that undermine them. But if others cannot see something beautiful in our human relationships, if they do not see that upon the basis of what Christ has done our Christian communities have been transformed into centers of radiating Gospel light, then we are not living up to our calling.
We must demonstrate love.
The world has a right to judge whether we are Christians or not on the basis of how we manifest substantive love to each other as Christians and to all people, because they are created in Gods image, deserving dignity and honor.
Our Manifesto
If Christians take these factors into account, then we may hope for the stirring of a revolution in our day. And, should our Lord delay His return, the century before us may be marked as a time when radical Christian proclamation went forth yet again in the power of the Holy Spirit turning the world upside down, forever altering the cultural landscape.
This is our manifesto, our burden, our prayer.
(end of manifesto)
Back to me:
Yes, for me , to be Christian is to be countercultural, but when they begin to talk of antithesis and truth and walking in it as if all of it is going to come "straight out of the Bible" (coincidentally, all fitting in nicely with the writings of Francis Schaeffer, some of which strikes a chord, but there is an intellectual "system" smell here). Maybe because I heard it when I was in college, and noticed the intellectual fervor, but missed the piece about "Our fellowships must be real communities: places in which others see our life together as something of beauty; something reflecting the beauty God intended for humanity at the beginning". Somehow, I dodn't get captured by the beauty of it.
This part:
We must maintain scriptural integrity, standing against those teachings and practices that undermine them. But if others cannot see something beautiful in our human relationships, if they do not see that upon the basis of what Christ has done our Christian communities have been transformed into centers of radiating Gospel light, then we are not living up to our calling.
Has something I both love and hate: the latter part that begins with : "But if others cannot see something beautiful in our human relationships" and the former: We must maintain scriptural integrity, standing against those teachings and practices that undermine them. When they say that, I feel the theology police coming; the "intellectual tweakers" who step in and start arguing fine points (not that there aren't any, but it leaves me cold.... I guess all the infighting between Southern Baptists in the years I was recipient of some of the last widespread healthy theological education before the fundamentalist police arrived and started treating a lot of people very badly (which makes me wish we had leaders in those days that thought more like this manifesto in terms of showing something beautiful in our human relationships).
Anyway, this manifesto makes some good points, and then it ruins it for me by threatening to tell me what all the answers are. A little humility goes a long way. And don't say I think everybody who wrote or really was influenced and helped by the manifesto or its community from which it arose are all conceited. I guess I would have to see more of how this theology plays itslef out, which is the whole point, don't you think? (And they themselves seem like they would agree)
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© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature.
Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:35:12 PM.
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