Defending the Church

Despite the Church's efforts to distance its present from the past, is it working? Mark Sayers opines about how our less than perfect past is leading to young adults leaving the Church:
Many Christian young adults feel that they are living on the wrong side of Christian history. When they share their faith with their secular friends they are reminded of pedophile priests, fundamentalism and the Spanish inquisition. When they share their faith with their Muslim friends, inevitably the Crusades will enter the conversation. When they share their faith with their Jewish friends, old painful stories that have been past down for generations , memories of ghetto’s, pogroms and ’Christian’ Germany engineering the Holocaust, will be heard again.
And:
This sort of cultural intolerance around faith creates a great tension in the believer. I am constantly approached by young adults who are trying to reconcile their faith with the disquiet that they feel over Christianity’s disputed historical track record. While Christians and historians will debate this, it is still a daily issue for many young adults today who live, study, work and operate within secular culture.
For many young adults who are trying to find a place in the world, to operate and ‘fit in’ within culture, the dislocation felt becomes too much, faith is left behind as identity and belonging is looked for outside of church walls.
As he said, do you think people are looking for an identity "outside of the church walls?" What can we do to start being more relevant to the struggles that young adults are facing? Other thoughts?

[HT: Kouya Chronicle]

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Comments (31)

The simple answer is that we don't have to defend Christians, or so called Christians, or the church of the past, we defend Jesus Christ and the gospel, and say that if anyone claiming to be a Christian did not act in accordance with what the Scriptures teach then we don't defend those actions, we simply believe in Jesus Christ and His Word and what He did on the cross and what He is doing in our lives today.
Amen, Tyler. There are enough reasons not to witness, we shouldn't look for more. Instead, we should love more, then what we say will matter.
don't defend Jesus. He's a big boy, seems to be able to take care of himself rather well---for over 2000 years.
Christians have always had a public relations problem, it’s certainly not new. In the first century they were accused of setting fire to Rome, being atheists, sacrificing babies and drinking blood. Then consider the brutalities of Constantine, the widespread immorality and drunkeness of priests celebrated by Chaucer, the debaucheries of the Borgia popes, indulgences, the inquisition. There have always been tares among the wheat, corruption in the church. But this is never an excuse not to embrace the truth.

I would argue that Muslims have an even tougher, more bloody legacy to overcome. It was established by the power of the sword and grew by the edge of the blade. One could say, “how could you be an atheist when atheistic regimes killed 20 million in the soviet Union, and 60 million in China”? Atheists by far have inflicted the most brutality on the human race. How could you be a Hindu and support the caste system, or a Jew when you abuse Palestinians, or a Republican when you support an immoral war, or a Democrat, a Mason, etc. The real question is how can you hold your head up and call yourself a human being when we've all done so much evil.

Christianity is the only religion that offers a convincing explanation for our evil behavior. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. No one can improve their status with a Holy God, we all need grace. Jesus offers it freely to all who would receive it. Even after receiving grace, we are still capable of sin. We have a will that is in opposition to God and are in need of saving. The earthly church has been called a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints. Grace is the remedy and there is no shame in recognizing we all, including the church, need help everyday.

The reason we are Christians is because Jesus is truly the Son Of God, the Bible is true and God is our creator and ruler. Not because the earthly church is a fun fraternal order to join. That is the message that will always be relevant to anyone.
Tyler is correct as far as it goes. Of course Muslims can say the same about atrocities committed in the name of Islam, and the same goes for Jews, Buddhists, etc. What we do have to recognize is that whenever any faith became an instrument of governance or commerce, it became corrupted. That actually happened early in Islam, but then, Christianity spread first among conquered peoples and lower classes, while Islam happened to face off two empires that were rotten to the core (Byzantine and Iranian, both with politically corrupted religious establishments of their own) so it became a powerhouse sooner, and also fell from the heights sooner.

We cannot proudly claim 2000 years of Christian or Church history as our heritage, or we embrace all the deviations committed in the name of Jesus. The moment that mere humans began spreading, interpreting, and in some instances using the Gospels, they became corrupted. Mennonites have the right general idea, trying to get back to how the early church was organized, but organization itself is antithetical to what Jesus taught. We can get together in fellowship, we are our brother's keeper, it is good to share our respective insights, but no institution is or can constitute Christianity.

Just by saying that I have rejected Benedict XVI, some assertions of C.S. Lewis, John Calvin, and who knows who else. But I am taking the Protestant Reformation to its ultimate limit. As Wycliffe said, man has no earthly spiritual overlord, but Jesus.
I think Mark is onto something, though I think its more nuanced than what he specifies. I think many young Christians are ashamed of their immediate past and context. I don't know too many people that get broken up about the crusades anymore, nor do I see frustration about things like the spanish inquisition. Its part of our history and legacy but not in a direct way and for those of us of European descent, its part of our European heritage as well. I do find other issues more resounding with youth, fundamentalism for example. And that seems to play its way out in the same way an embarrassing relative does, its just kind of awkward.

I think the bigger issue is that the church has not found a way to broadly articulate ways to be part of society and Christian, to take part in culture while still holding onto Christian identity. Some of us do, sure but others call for a sharp separation between the secular world (is God really not there?) and the Christian one, meaning that if someone finds the secular world more appealing than the Christian, we've got an issue as that young person leaves their faith in the Christian culture to go to indie bands in the secular.

Maybe that's just my take though.

Also, for what this is worth, I don't think we can simply cut out whole sections of people who call themselves Christian in the past. They were Christian as articulated by the church of their day, they understood themselves as Christians, and act in Christ's name. While I may not agree with them, I don't feel comfortable just denying their faith. Lets face it, the Spanish Inquisition was preformed by Christians, as were the Crusades, as were many of racial injustices in America. We've got a history and I don't think we can deny it because the people who did those things aren't the right 'kind' of Christian.
Indeed, Christianity is about Christ and not Christians. If we are saying "look at US, do what WE do" we've missed the point.

However, take a look at works by D'Souza (What's So Great About Christianity) or McGrath (The Twilight of Atheism) before you are confronted with polemic about Christian atrocities.

Atheist regimes committed a) orders of magnitude more killings b) in much less time and c) much more recently when we're supposedly all enlightened and civilised.

As always, the truth will out and Christians should inform themselves and not be afraid of finding out what really happened.
Aside from giving lessons in history (Does history really show such a simple connection between the teachings of Jesus Christ and all these things, or is it really a little more complicated than that?) Is it only Christendom that has skeletons in it's closet? The idea behind such secular criticism seems to be either that you ought to be able to identify with some group of people who have an untainted past, or you can avoid identification with any group as if you were put here on this planet without any ethic, cultural or religious history being responsible for where and who you are today. "Secular" people don't have a clean slate either. Very few people really do. The trick is to avoid identification with their past to promote that appearance. We are all sinners. Christianity should be about Christ, but is it any surprise to anyone that many people calling themselves by his name, don't follow in his ways? No, what's more surprising is the many people who have done so. Why don't secular people ask us about them? Ask these people if all the Christians they know or have heard of are like the examples they confront us with? If not, why is that? If so, we've got some more work to do and maybe they should get out more.
I think the first mistake made is to accept the idea that you have to "defend" the church. Defend your faith, perhaps, but not necessarily the institution. Because the other mistake being made is to forget that the Christian church is made up of humans, who God comes to in their brokenness.

That means that just because you have faith in the salvation that comes from the crucifixion (sp?), you aren't alays going to behave as a perfect believer. The Son of Man was the only perfect believer.

People who want to question the horrors perpetrated by people claiming to be Christians need to remember this and also remember that sin has no boundaries in faith, ethnicity, gender or anything else.

Humans do bad things. We can't seem to help it.

What our Christian faith teaches us is that there is hope for salvation, even when we screw up time after time after time, in so many ways. Gossip is as cruel to our neighbors as pedophilia or murder.

Our faith is what gets us up of the ground to try and get it right the next time and try to make amends for the last time.

Finally, acknowledge the struggles of young adults to want to fit in, but never forget - Jesus didn't waste a lot of time trying to fit in.
Another important aspect, at least in my opinion, is that a lot of those I come into contact have intellectual objections to not just Christianity but religion in general. Let's face it, if we were to step back for a moment and look at the claims of Christianity, on the surface they seem pretty far out there and in conflict with so-called rational scientific reasoning that we expect in every other area of our lives.

The truth, however, is that the Bible - and especially the New Testament - is backed by history and archeology. While science brings some of our traditional beliefs into question, science seems to lean towards a very real possibility of a God. As Christians, we need to step up our game and understand our beliefs inside and out. That's not just what is in the Bible, but the history and context within which the books of the Bible were written. We need to be able to explain how the Bible came to be what it is. We need to also be open to the possibility that our views of what the Bible says and means may not be what the Bible says and means. We need to learn to see the objections against Christianity through the eyes of non-believers and be able to respond to those objections. Isn't that a key command of Christians: to have an answer for why we believe for everyone who asks?
This really boils down to Biblical fidelity. I noticed "fundamentalism" was equated as being as evil as Nazi atrocities (although these atrocities took place in a land that was very Biblically liberal as far as its Protestant constituency went, very believing in the Pope as far as the Catholic church went), that fundamentalism was equated as being as horrendous as papally based initiatives such as the Inquisition and Crusades, and pedophile priests. I must say, that's a pretty unfair equation.

Fundamental Christianity is not perfect, because it is practiced by born-again people who still sin. But fundamentalist believers, when they do go off base and carry out witchhunts or abortion clinic bombings or practice slavery, or find perverse preachers in their midst, can see the wrong and repent of it - they are correctable by Scripture, something Catholicism and non-believers in the Bible's teachings ultimately are not.

I think more damage is, and has been done, by liberalism in the church - people who say they believe in Christ but then go out and act like the world, and especially by their denying the inspiration and the truth and the teaching of the Holy Bible (again, look at the typical Protestant in Germany vs. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who gave his life for his Jewish brethren) - than fundamentalism has ever done.
I think the problem is with words like "fundamentalism," and I realize Christiane uses the word because many in the world use it, not because it is fundamental to Biblical faith. Historians sometimes try to sort out whether the American Revolution was based on Enlightenment or on the evangelicalism of the Great Awakening. The truth is, it would have been impossible without the contributions of both. Then there are specific issues that cut across both of these categories. Sometimes a Baptist revival is more democratic, sometimes an Anglican mission is more humane. Anglican bishops were the first to (wrongly in my view) condemn Darwin, devout followers of John Wesley made important contributions to science.

Liberalism is another word that has changed meaning a dozen times. In 19th century England, Ronald Reagan would have been considered a liberal. Thomas Jefferson is claimed alike as the inspiration of Reagan Republicans and libertarian Democrats. But I am wandering away from the church, as the world often drags the church into politics.

I wonder about how easily born-again Christians can presume to be forgiven. The two men who murdered Matthew Shepherd believe they were instantly forgiven when they repented, but he is burning in hell because he died (at their hands) a gay man. Dubious. Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands out because he was a conservative Lutheran and a WW I U-Boat captain, who recognized the Nazi regime as evil, but many of Hitler's votes came from very conservative Lutheran voters who cheered that Luther's more ill-considered anti-Semitic remarks were coming true. Name any religious denomination, establishment, category, Roman, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, I can name you atrocities committed in its name, and selfless sacrifices for God that each faith inspired. Going back to the Bible is good, but we fallible humans manage to each find something different in the Bible. For example, I find the entire plan of evolutionary biology laid out in the first two chapters of Genesis, while others with equal sincerity rely on the Bible to deny that it ever happened. The Bible is not the sort of authority that we can all whip each other into line with. It just helps us to each get ourselves right with God, and try to get ourselves right with our fellow humans.
Be always ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you - if young people run into this kind of thinking, which is pushed by leftist colleges all over the place, so what? What else did they expect from a fallen, God-hating world?

Young people in America (myself included) are growing up into a softer world. Socially we're not as strong as we should be. We're often pushovers, and vigorous defense of one's beliefs is not "in" these days. But I believe Christians are called anyway to be strong voices for the faith, and if they have some stigmas to overcome in this area, it's good for us.

Get strong, go real, speak up. If young Christians can distance themselves from today's soft, "emo" culture with a decent repudiation of the lies perpetuated by liberal academia, it's a huge point in their favor, and shouldn't be a bad witness for the truth of the Gospel either.

- A

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