YHAOS,
An excellent question posed with remarkable clarity.
A curious thought struck me as I was reading commentaries about the emergence of the Christian experience outside the realm of the established church. Your remarks crystallized my insight.
I have long been dismayed that mainline denominations - Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, et al - have moved far to the left during the past 40 years.
I have been a part of the institution for nearly all of those years. Those of us who were raised in the church when it revered traditional Christian thought grew increasingly frustrated. Many left the church and began ministries outside institutional frameworks. There is no question but that followers of Christ are as numerous as ever.
The troubling aspect of this transition in the institutional church runs parallel with the government's opression of religion. That opression is demonstrably ideological. It is socialist and humanist.
Church institutional leadership has kept pace with the ideology of the left. Clearly they have done so to preserve the influence of the church in the public sector. Tragically they have not understood that they have put themselves in bed with the devil.
Just this same condition ocurred in Germany in the 30s. The church sold its soul to maintain its profile.
Diminished numbers in the church in no way demonstrate a lessening of spirituality. In fact, it probably demonstrates quite the opposite.
Simply amazing insights, Amos.
IMHO, we are in a period of history that strongly evokes the history of the German church in the run-up to, and during the Third Reich. The lesson to be learned from that experience is that organized churches that bend the Truth of God to the exigencies of the sociopolitical Zeitgeist of an age are selling out the legacy that God intends for man.
The other lesson to be drawn from this period is that faithful and loving men such as Dietrich Bonhoffer are the ones who pay the ultimate price for faithful and principled defense of eternal truth in the teeth of the devil's power.
Now the Reformed Church seems not to have any saints. But from my RC perspective, I just have to say: Bonhoffer was one of the few great Christian martyrs of the 20th century: He was strung up, at age 39, by piano wire, the very day immediately preceding the day Hitler committed suicide. If he were a Catholic, we would have been beatified in anticipation of sainthood long before now.
Given Bonhoeffer's experience, reason, and spirituality, it is not surprising he envisioned an ultimately "churchless Christianity" -- as the only means of escape for the spiritual life of man from the libido dominandi of the self-selected and self-divinized "masters of mankind" that emerged with a vengeance in the middle of the last century and thereafter, and unto our own day.
FWIW. Thank you so much for your beautiful essay.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”
. . . . . FS Key
Well, I’m happy to have solidified some of your thoughts, albeit however inadvertently. Your reaction seems to have produced good results. You’ve made some good points.
My own experience confirms what you report. It’s been about forty years since I fired the ‘mainline denominations,’ as you characterize them. Particularly the Presbyterian Church, but the Methodists as well, and very much for the reasons you specify in your remarks. I think your most telling observation is that the mainline denominations put their souls in jeopardy for the sake of the public sector influence they hoped to preserve, and in the doing, they lost both. Amen, Brother.
My reason for asking ‘what, exactly, is meant by ‘government sanctioned’ religion? stems from an entirely different motive than yours in writing what you did, yet it still definitely ties in with your most excellent points. Over the past forty years, from time to time we hear of a speaker at a college or high school, or in some other government venue, who gives a particularly outrageous anti-American speech, or a talk attacking the values of Western Civilization. But much more the case is that speeches and talks are routinely given all the time about a wide range of topics in such venues. In both instances, in controversy and non-controversy, seldom, if ever, do I recall anyone suggesting that such speeches and talks, over whatever topics, were ‘government sanctioned.’
Yet, let it be merely proposed that a speech or a talk be given on a religious theme, and immediately such a howl is raised as to shake the very rafters of Heaven itself. Such a double-standard is so blatant as to be absurd. By reason or logic, there can be no justification to declare a religious speech or talk to be government sanctioned simply because of the forum in which it is given, while denying that the same status, then, would apply to all subjects.
There are any number of similar absurd contradictions in the arguments of the anti Judeo-Christian forces which today infest American society. Had the religious leaders of the major denominations attacked these contradictions head-on when first they arose sixty years ago, and pressed the issue by enjoining their flocks to put on the heat with our spineless politicians, then we would not be fighting a desperate battle to keep our faith from being exiled entirely from public discourse. Instead, just as you say Amos, religious leaders chose what they thought was the smart play, and hunkered down in the belief they could outlast the storm. They couldn’t.
At a time when history demonstrated our need for strong religious leaders of unshakable courage and integrity, our mainline denominations sent us weak fools.