The Church Divided

Or: I realize I keep coming back to same themes but can’t stop coming back to them

With rumors of 2024 presidential candidates emerging and others confirmed we quickly march into what is likely more fierce division. The division of American politics is covered by outlets inside and outside the American media system. Think pieces, activist manifestos, and poly-sci dissertations will be published, posted, and tweeted with comment sections undoubtedly filled with bots, trolls, scammers, and good actors seeking to get their “likes” and 2 cents in on the issue. There are those who love the fight, who would rather the season come and go without their knowing and still others who say “if I die before next election cycle I’ll be okay.” The tension and division is felt by all who participate or just stay informed. Institutions like college campuses host candidates, retired political figures, and commentators throughout the period as they vie for the capture of young minds around the political compass. Likewise, the Christian Church becomes a battle ground for the ideologically driven frenzy of hot takes, pulpit pleas, and moral grandstanding. Another mass of minds to be sought after, pursued and solicited.

The political schism within the church is no secret to the outside. Large denominations like Mennonite USA and United Methodist Church are splitting from the tensions that could not be resolved despite their best efforts during convention season. Within the “evangelical” world the Southern Baptist Convention is in turmoil, figures like Falwell or Rick Warren are looked at with increased skepticism and rampant abuse of power in mega churches sow distrust resulting in “deconstructions.” This being the age of the internet none of this goes unnoticed. All of this brings me to a convicting question: what is the Christian Church offering to this generation that it can’t get somewhere else?

The columns from WaPo and NYT, the atheist YouTube channels, the podcast space all have voices saying they see what’s inside the church. The core critique is likely the same one that has always been leveled against the church and it’s one word: hypocrite.

The words from pulpits and in our scripture call us to be “salt and light,” “transformed by the renewing of our minds,” “not conformed to the patterns of this world.” Thousands and thousands of scripture can be quoted giving positive commands for conduct calling us to be different than what the world has to offer. I don’t think an honest Christian will step in and say we are doing a bang up job of that, let alone God the Father. In fact, the church is doing a bang up job at falling short of the commands we find throughout scriptures. We give the outsiders looking in all the ammo they need for the criticism and the church looses respect for those mistakes by those inside. The American civil religion has supplanted or co-opted the Christian church and the result has been the outside world calling our bluff; we have indeed become more American than we are Christian. This should give pause.

I don’t have a master plan to pitch to bring the church away from its golden calf of American politics and can only describe what I’m seeing. I see a split, fractured, and hurting body that has a political left and a political right that can’t seem to separate their renewed lives from their old American minds. Their allegiance to scripture is surpassed by their allegiance to a certain course of political actions to have their vision realized throughout State institutions. For the church to move forward these allegiances to American polity are what need deconstructed, not the solas. For the church to move forward it’s our own culture that needs fixing, not the government (at least our culture BEFORE the government). For the church to move forward it needs to make the main thing the main thing again; Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection. It’s this grace given by God that sustains not the face in the DC bully pulpit.

“By Grace you have been saved, through faith, not by works so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9) applies beyond works of kindness or proclamation but also to the polling station. Our voting habits won’t save us or justify us and they never were going to. It’s a life built upon the death and resurrection of Christ that holds us; no ideology or economic theory or moralistic arguments can bring us into the promised land. It was, is, and always will be His blood granting access to life eternal and us behaving as though right political thought does that is what turned things rotten.