Dangers to orthodox Christianity

Dangers without

Christianity has always had opposition from non-Christian sources (see pretty much any random page of narrative from the New Testament for evidence), so in one sense the current moment isn’t all that different from historical norms. On the other hand, it certainly feels different to many Christians in USA version 1. This is because, for much of US history, Christianity was culturally and statistically dominant within the US, and lacked any governmental opposition.

This is not to say that USA version 1 was ever a full-fledged “Christian nation,” but it was a nation in which Christianity was unopposed in law and supported in practice. Recall that the First Amendment to the Constitution was enacted at a time when several states actually had established state churches. The point of the First Amendment was truly not to “separate church and state” but rather to “separate church and central government,” so that no one state (either with an established church or without) could be disadvantaged by a national established church. The 14th Amendment mooted this (and the state churches were long gone by then) but it is part of our history.

It has also been observed (see Bellah’s 1967 paper on the subject, also more recently Kidd here) that the US has always had a “civil religion” that was a sort of least-common-denominator Judeo-Christian morality, combined with some features of common patriotic pageantry. This seems to me to be largely correct (though I might quibble with some of Bellah’s specifics) – even those founders who were not themselves orthodox Christians were still in broad-strokes agreement with Judeo-Christian morality and were happy to work closely with the orthodox believers in their ranks (consider Adams and Jefferson, for example, if one excludes the two decades of personal enmity just prior to their reconciliation in 1812).

In any event, from the early days of the republic, Christianity was never officially opposed in any sense until the 1960s (Engel v. Vitale, Abington v. Schempp) and 1970s (Lemon v. Kurtzman)* Until this point, Christian observance, even in a vaguely governmental context was universally tolerated. This is why, to older Americans, it feels as though opposition to Christianity from government sources is increasing – because it is, at least relative to the culture in which they (we, actually) grew up!

Now, one can argue (correctly, in my view) that this is just a function of a delay in responding to the 1870s-era change in the structure of federalism. However, this doesn’t change the fact that the governmental regime, beginning in the 1960s, was significantly less tolerant of Christian observance than it was before. There is also a case to be made that the new regime is in some ways better for the Christian church, since it means that there is less nominalism (“culturally Christian” church members or attenders who have little or no actual faith). Again, a correct observation in my view, but it is equally true that the Christian church tends to grow most rapidly in times of serious persecution, but no Christian desires that!

I want to be clear here: Christianity is not currently persecuted in USA version 1. What is happening, though, is that the guard rails** that keep us away from such persecution are being dismantled. Just two points of evidence (there are many others***):

  1. One of the two major parties in the US has passed a resolution (unanimously, though at an off-year summer conference) claiming that “religious views” and claims of “religious liberty” are essentially a smokescreen clouding efforts to oppress minorities.
  2. SCOTUS decisions in the 1960s and 1970s making a huge legal change affecting religious citizens in some way (Engel v. Vitale, Roe v. Wade [arguably], Lemon v. Kurtzman, et al.) have always provided some sort of “balancing test” to weigh the rights being supported in the case against the First Amendment rights of the religious. Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) did not do so however, except in the dissenting opinions. The majority opinion simply took no notice of the likely effect of its decision on the many congregations who will now be pressured to recognize or solemnize “marriages” that are contrary to their established doctrines.

The latter point especially is a harbinger of the future, I’m afraid – the left wing of SCOTUS didn’t even feel the necessity of a nod in the direction of religious freedom. We haven’t yet reached Canadian or British levels of legal suppression of religious speech, but it’s not for lack of desire on the part of the left.

At this time, the fiercest opposition to Christianity from non-Christians does appear to principally come from the political left††. There are certainly non-Christians on the political right†† as well, but they tend to be more laissez-faire and not so much concerned with opposing Christianity (that is, they regard Christianity as wrong, but not evil). There are a few exceptions to this (perhaps the late Christopher Hitchens fell into this category – though I’m not really sure he would have tolerated being referred to as being “on the political right”), but they are few and far between.

Dangers within

I mentioned above that nearly any narrative page from the New Testament will provide evidence of opposition to Christianity from the outside. Nearly any non-narrative page (specifically, the various letters to various early churches) will provide evidence of danger to Christianity from the inside – false teaching within the church: heresy.

I am using “heresy” here to mean lack of orthodoxy on a primary doctrine – that is, a belief or teaching that contradicts one of the principal creeds of the faith. Heresies have been many and varied over the years – the linked post contains a (long) list of beliefs declared heresy by the Catholic Church; many of those would be regarded as heretical by any orthodox Christian group, but not all groups have been as organized in their response to heresy as the Catholic Church. Many of the 50-odd heresies on that list have either died out, or are represented today in other clearly non-orthodox religious groups (Latter Day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians, etc.). These other groups might be viewed as “Christian” in some sense, but their beliefs are sufficiently different from orthodox, historical Christianity as to preclude most fellowship across the group boundaries. This is not to say that individual members of these groups might not have orthodox beliefs, but the official group beliefs are outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy.

The heresies that are most active today within the Christian church seem to be syncretistic (and even gnostic) in nature. Syncretism (in the Christian context) is the absorption of ideas from the surrounding culture that are specifically contrary to orthodoxy.

Note, though, that there are two somewhat similar practices (assimilation and inculturation) that are not heretical. Assimilation occurs when novel ideas that are not contrary to primary doctrine are brought into the church. One must certainly be wary of Trojan horses here, but this practice has been present in the church from the earliest days (consider Paul: “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some“; many of the early church writers, especially Justin Martyr, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas discussed similar ideas). The issue is not that Christian practice must never change – adopting true, beautiful ideas from whatever source is helpful for the Church.

The rather similar notion of inculturation (making Christianity relevant for a different culture, often in a missionary context) also has a long history in the Church (Paul again). Here, the dangers to the church are less severe (the core church is largely unchanged by this process), but one must be sure that what is being inculturated is really the Christian message. The method of presentation will change, but the message should not.

These processes only become heresy when ideas that are specifically contrary to established primary doctrines are incorporated from the surrounding culture (or brought back from the site of inculturation). This, I claim, is happening today with “Progressive Christianity” – a syncretism of Christianity and political leftism††. Subsequently, I will flesh out the details of this argument, but suffice it to say here that not all of “Progressive Christianity” is heretical – some would more properly be called inculturation. I will attempt to delineate carefully which is which.

Final comments on syncretism

There is also significant discussion today about a similar syncretism with the political right††, called (mostly by its opponents) “Christian Nationalism.” If you believe its most strident opponents, Christian Nationalism is pervasive within evangelicalism. There are good reasons, though, to doubt that it is as ubiquitous as its opponents say. In addition to Sey’s discussion in the linked review, I would point out the following:

  1. Its opponents describe it as the belief that “American identity is inextricable from Christianity” and “the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.” On the other hand, even those Christian Nationalists who actually use the “Christian Nationalist” label say no such thing: they say that they are quite socially conservative, have Biblical reasons for those beliefs, and assert that their beliefs should not be excluded from the public square just because they are Biblical in origin. That sounds like bog-standard First Amendment stuff to me, and I’m not detecting any primary doctrine heresy there, either.
  2. One of its opponents described Christian Nationalism as (in the words of an unnamed Trump-supporting interlocutor) the belief that “America is the last hope of Christianity.” I’m pretty involved in conservative Christianity and Christian conservatism, and I literally know (of) no one who would ever say such a thing. I’m not doubting the veracity of Mr. Hansen’s story, but I seriously doubt that this sort of “Americolatry” is a statistically significant problem within the Christian church. In fact, I suspect strongly that the gentleman who said this, like Trump himself, is only peripherally or nominally involved with Christianity.
  3. There is a significant difference between advocating that “America should support Christian values and Christian policies because it was originally a Christian nation” and “America should support Christian values and Christian policies because I, as a Christian, believe that those values and policies are correct, and I am a part of the American body politic.” It’s far from clear to me that any of the social science research cited by Christian Nationalism opponents is capable of distinguishing between these two positions. Instead, they ask questions like, “The federal government should advocate Christian values – agree or disagree?” As opposed to what? Suppressing Christian values? Advocating Islamic values? Having exclusively valueless policies (whatever those might be)? This is just weak social science – one wonders if it’s intentional straw-man construction.
  4. There is also a significant difference between, “America was originally a Christian nation” and “the America of my youth was much more supportive of Christian public expression and Christian policies than today, and I preferred the former.” Despite the difference, the former might be used as a shorthand for the latter, in the absence of careful thought about the difference between the two. When I have had conversations with people who said something like the first statement, they have uniformly come around to the second statement as being more accurate (though I’m never sure that they wouldn’t use the first statement again later – it’s pretty pithy, and the second one, well, isn’t).
  5. If Christian Nationalism were the newly pervasive problem its opponents assert it to be, I suspect that it would be detectable somehow in the current liturgical symbolism in American conservative church sanctuaries. To be sure, many have American flags in the sanctuary, but if you check, you’ll find that it’s the same (usually rather faded) flag that’s been there since the church was founded (or, perhaps 1959, when the 50-star flag was introduced) – hardly a recent innovation. Other flags and banners in conservative church sanctuaries tend to be quite Biblical in nature, and (in my observation at least) haven’t changed substantially since roughly the 1990s, when liturgical banners enjoyed a resurgence (and the old faded art from the 1950s was finally taken down). On the other hand, a visit to a more progressive congregation will inevitably show a cornucopia of LGBT+ flags, transgender flags, environmental exhortations and BLM posters – sometimes in the sanctuary, certainly in the halls.

I’m open to being persuaded, but I just don’t see syncretism with the political right as being the same level of heretical danger to the Christian church as syncretism with the political left. To the extent that it exists, it seems to be mostly a PR problem, since it is much more prevalent in the discussions of its opponents than its “adherents.”


* It’s worth mentioning that all these are state practices that were halted under the restructuring of federalism following the passage of the 14th Amendment – all of these would clearly have been fine based solely on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

** Glenn Reynolds has written here (and, more recently, here) about the dismantling of guard rails in society more broadly (i.e. not just those that keep us away from religious persecution, but those that maintain a civil society).

*** Surprisingly enough, David French, who wrote the linked article back in 2017 (and others in which he advocated more specifically that we Christians should vote based on policy considerations, not Christian identity anymore) turned later toward excoriating any Christians who dared support Trump on policy grounds. It doesn’t make his earlier work wrong, though, just rather puzzling in view of his later stance that (apparently) Christians should only support devout, orthodox Christian politicians.

† Obligatory BLM comment – capital letters matter: “black lives matter” is a phrase, with which I heartily agree; “Black lives matter” is a sentence, with which I heartily agree; “Black Lives Matter” (or “BLACK LIVES MATTER”) is an organization, largely Marxist in intent, with which I could not disagree more.

†† See here for what I mean by political “left” and “right.”