You’ve seen him in USA Today, Christianity Today and Relevant magazine. You’ve seen his book Green Like God. Now Jonathan Merritt, a graduate of Liberty University and son of a former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, charts a new course for Christian social engagement.
As a child, one of my prized possessions was a Bible given to me by my parents. It was wrapped in cheap navy blue bonded leather, and my name was stamped on the cover in gold letters.
Over the years, the gold letters faded and the bonded leather peeled at the corners, revealing itself as neither bonded nor leather, but I still treasured that book. This Living Bible translation, written in more colloquial English, was a welcome alternative to the KJV for a 12-year-old.
I loved that book, but I wished it weren’t so long. Pages as thin as a cell wall with seven-point font arranged into double columns. If God is so smart, I wondered, couldn’t He condense what He wanted to say into a couple of chapters, or even better, a pamphlet? Why couldn’t God be more economical with His words?
I now see the Bible’s depth and breadth as a gift. It’s unplumbable, with a word for nearly every life stage and conundrum humanity faces. Only the Deity could craft such a book.
The Bible is so vast and complex, it tends to make humans uncomfortable. We want to simplify it, cut it down to size, to extract only what we think we need. We’re lured to condense its message into talking points that are easier to manage. We take a slice out of the Bible-pie and then call it the pie.
Reductionism in Action
When I’ve asked my more progressive Christian friends to tell me what the Bible is all about, they talk about the Exodus narrative, resistance to the empire, and God’s heart for the poor. They’ve distilled that big book down to justice or liberation or subversion.
Some of my more conservative Christian friends focus on the ideas of God’s holiness, our sinfulness, and the need for humans to be “set apart.” They reduce the Bible’s message to one of individual salvation and personal piety. As a result, they spend life trying to be as “good” as possible, using every opportunity to call others to righteousness, out of their “sinfulness” (as they define that by their reading of the Bible).
Who is right? To some extent, both are. They’ve each picked up on important biblical themes, but they’ve done so at the exclusion of others. The Bible has become more manageable in both cases, but it has been robbed of its magnitude and majesty, which rests on its being embraced as a whole.
Christians have reduced the immense witness of the Scriptures to only a few culture-war issues—namely, abortion and gay marriage. Both are important issues deserving serious thought. The Scriptures speak often about life and sexuality. But they also regularly address poverty, equality, justice, peace, and care of God’s good creation.
If Christians act as if the culture-war issues are the only issues or make them so paramount that they dwarf all others, we reduce the limitless bounty of the Scriptures to fit our preconceived agendas.
A Broader Agenda
Some of today’s leading Christian entities and voices show new life as they support “a broadening agenda.” Still socially conservative on many issues, they feel called to attend to issues that most Christians haven’t championed in the past.
For example, the great majority of young Christians still believe that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. At the same time, interest in social justice issues is growing among all Christians (especially young people). According to in-depth research by LifeWay, 66 percent of young churchgoers claim that “social action is an extremely important part of their lives.” Yet, few believe they will see “a significant contribution” from current Christian leadership in addressing these issues.
So some are taking matters into their own hands through broader advocacy efforts. A great example is my friend Tyler Wigg-Stevenson. Tyler believes that “God abhors the shedding of innocent blood,” and he recognizes that nuclear weapons are unique vehicles for indiscriminate killing. If they are ever used in any circumstances, they will lead to massive loss of innocent life. Tyler believes Christians who value life and desire to follow a risen Jesus must oppose the existence of such weapons.
In 2009, he formed the Two Futures Project, a Christian organization fighting for the reduction, and ultimately, the abolition of nuclear weapons. And he has gained support from Christian leaders, including the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, megachurch icons Bill and Lynne Hybels, and the editor in chief of Christianity Today, David Neff. What was viewed as a fringe “liberal” issue a generation ago is now finding traction among a diverse body of mainstream Christians.
The church is waking up to the inadequacies of a public witness where a few issues get all the attention and the others fall by the wayside. Should the church fight for the lives of the unborn? Absolutely. But can Christians afford to ignore the 3 million already-living who will die from preventable water- related diseases this year? What about the 1.2 billion people without access to safe drinking water? And what of the 1-million-plus Africans who will unnecessarily die of malaria in the next 12 months? How do we plan to address the plight of the poor in America’s inner cities and the systemic injustices of our education system?
Does an embrace of the full biblical witness lead us to a myopic agenda that pays these issues little more than lip service? Today’s Christians know we can do better on a whole range of issues.
Believers’ Greater Political Diversity
This broadening agenda has led to another mark of rising believers: political diversity. As Christian scholar David Gushee observed, a growing number of today’s Christians share a “commitment to political independence and avoidance of partisan entanglements and their negative consequences.” They want to become co-laborers with God. They aren’t trying to ride into the kingdom on the back of an elephant or a donkey.
Growing up, I thought being Democrat and Christian were mutually exclusive. I’m sure some on the other side felt the same way about being Republican. Today, I’m convinced that being Christian may mean eschewing party labels so that none but Christ can claim Christians as slaves.
In Jesus’ day, every great religious teacher had a posse—what the Bible calls “disciples.” One group was the partisan Jews who wanted to throw the Romans out, to rebel, to take back their country for God. When they asked Jesus if they should pay taxes to Caesar, they were saying, “Whose side are you on—Rome’s or Israel’s?”
The question is analogous to the way many Christians act during an election year, surveying the church parking lot to see which candidate’s sticker is on which bumper.
Jesus sees their intentions for what they are and refuses to play their game. He tells them to bring Him a coin. Jesus asks, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
Then He said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
When they heard this, the Scripture says, they left “amazed.” Jesus wasn’t going to let anyone put Him into a partisan box. His agenda was to do whatever the Father desired, and He wasn’t going to co-opt God into a political agenda. Jesus eschews their labels and avoids their traps, and it shocks them. When Christians do the same in our day, they should expect similar responses.
Not long ago, a newspaper reporter asked me whom I voted for in the last presidential election. I declined to answer. She pressed me again. I told her I couldn’t answer that question because I wasn’t sure Jesus would respond if He were sitting in my seat. I was half-joking, but she asked for clarification.
Jesus came to earth in a time when Israel was dealing with its own partisan unrest. They were struggling with how to relate to a government that did not honor their community’s values. After reading the Gospels and considering the way Jesus responded, I wasn’t convinced the Son of God could claim either party were He alive today.
I think He would be a new kind of “values voter”—one who might offer support on moral issues no matter which party claimed ownership over it. The interviewer was floored, explaining that in all her years of religious reporting, she couldn’t remember a single interviewee who refused to answer a question about party affiliation—certainly not based on a faith conviction.
Many Christians have now followed suit, refusing to align with either side. Rather than red or blue, many Christians tend to be a comfortable shade of purple. They are tired of an entrenched public witness that seeks to villainize, demonize, and destroy those perceived as the enemy, rather than listen to, learn from, and love our neighbors. They are weary of a culture-war mentality that speaks without listening, divides rather than unites, and promotes destructive partisanship.
Some of us have become nomads, political orphans who care more about living a life consistent with the teachings and ministry of Jesus Christ than toeing a particular party line. As activist Shane Claiborne says, a new generation of “political misfits” is rising from the ranks of the church community. These individuals are socially conservative but globally aware—more “conservative” on some issues and more “liberal” on others. Rather than a swelling religious Left, Claiborne says, we’re witnessing the advent of the religious “stuck-in-the-middle.”
Rejecting the labels and even the culture wars themselves, many of today’s Christians are carving out a new path that winds back and forth through the public square. And perhaps that is exactly where Christians need to be.
A Body with Different Parts and Passions
The Apostle Paul spoke of the church as the Body of Christ, a faith community that is made up of individual souls but exists as one body. Christians are best served, he contends, when all their individual gifts function together. He points out that our propensity is to assume that others should possess the same gifts we do, and he warns against those who look on the differently gifted with condescension.
As with spiritual gifts, so too with physical gifts and passions that are also distributed by the Spirit. Some today are exceptionally concerned for the poor, gifted by God to champion that work. Others are passionate about peacemaking, and they may choose to devote a portion of their lives or even their vocations to educating the church or fighting against unnecessary declarations of war. As the Puritans used to say, God breaks every heart differently.
The Scriptures call the peacemaker to care for the poor and the poverty advocate to be a peacemaker, but their lives may not be spent addressing each with equal vigor or time. The peacemaker must not look on the poverty advocate with disdain, and the poverty advocate should resist the urge to resent the peacemaker.
Christians should not desire that every person work on one issue and not another. When the church sings in symphonic stereo, the sound is beautiful.
When I am tempted to turn up my nose at other Christians—yes, even culture-warring ones—who offer their witness in a way that differs from mine, I think about the navy blue codex from my childhood. Between its bonded leather covers sit 66 books with 1,189 chapters and 31,103 verses, each one expressing something of our Creator’s character and speaking into our lives.
I can either scan this book for passages that support my politics and my passions, or I can let it be what it is, a vast and varied book with more wisdom than I might ever acquire on this side of eternity.
Adapted with permission from A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars by Jonathan Merritt. Copyright © 2012 by Jonathan Merritt. Reprinted by permission of FaithWords. All rights reserved.
