Four decades ago, Francis Schaeffer published his book A Christian Manifesto (1981). He opened, “The basic problem of Christians in this country in the last eighty years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.” He argued that the church laments isolated cultural problems such as pervasive pornography, breakdown of the family, abortion, and so on. Yet, we remain incapable of understanding and responding to these issues, since we do not understand that these are “each thing a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem.”
I believe that the chaos at the Capitol is a rare, transparent opportunity to see this dynamic on display. Sadly, many people will miss this lesson. Part two is my attempt to shine a light on this moment.
The Clash of the Godless
On January 6, 2021, we witnessed what happens when the godless go to war with the godless. Perhaps the most iconic image is the man dressed in horns and body paint, like an actual pagan Barbarian, strolling through the halls of Congress and standing in the Vice President’s position. Could what this means be anymore on-the-nose?
The MAGA march—not just the rioters—represented a group of people who exchanged trust in the providence of God with faith in politics and personalities. Yes, I know that there were people carrying “Jesus Saves” and other “Christian” signs at the march—something that many Christians seemed a little too giddy to point out. I don’t doubt that there might have been individual Christians, to their shame, participating in the march. However, the march was not a Christian event.
How can we evaluate this? Their methods reveal their worldview. “Humanism,” Schaeffer wrote, “with its lack of any final basis for values or law, always leads to chaos.” As the days have passed since the riot, we have learned more and more disturbing details about people arriving intending to do real harm. Other people were doing vandalism and taking selfies inside offices. This is not what a Christian movement looks like. So, the Barbarian represents the true spirit of the MAGA march without the religious or Christian charade.
However, what we witnessed was only the godless invading the halls of the godless. The Barbarian and the Senator can both defy the authority of God over life, the only difference is that one is wearing body paint. Nearly every reaction that I have seen judged this moment as an attempted insurrection or coup. A real insurrection would result in a change of kings this was just the same king in a change of clothes. Both the Barbarian and the Senator are committed to godless politics.
Many people, including Christians, missed this fact and bemoaned the desecration of those “hallowed halls.” What is so sacred about those halls? I tried to point this out with a tongue-in-cheek post on Facebook, “The bright side of these demonstrators storming the Capitol is that—at least for a day—the politicians cannot vote on bombing a third-world nation in the name of ‘freedom,' funding billions of dollars to abortion, or sneer at a Catholic judge for her faith.”
Have we so easily forgotten how grossly the politicians themselves have already desecrated those halls and chambers? We so quickly forgot how just three days before a representative opened the Congress with a prayer that ended, "We ask it in the name of the monotheistic god, Brahma, and the god known by many names by many different faiths. Amen and awoman.”
As I referenced in part one, the news of churches being burned and vandalized last summer brought, at most, a pathetic whimper from many of our Christian leaders. Now, many of those same Christians are decrying the storming of the Capitol. Silence when the house of God is destroyed but outrage when the house of Man is destroyed. Where do you think our faith truly lies?
Rampant Humanism
If we only see events such as this one isolated from their worldview context, then we miss the heart of the conflict and what is truly happening. This event is one example of the results of humanism’s failure to build a healthy, just society. The cathedral of secularism is crumbling and many of our cultural conflicts are manifestations of this failure. The problem is that Christians miss the deeper worldview issue, distracted by superficial skirmishes.
We have missed the fact that there are two worldviews that stand in complete opposition to one another. These are the Christian worldview and the humanistic worldview. Humanism is the worldview which states that there is no transcendent but only the material world, no God but only man, and no authority above man’s judgments. In this sense, humanism is a presuppositional category that might describe several worldviews such as atheism, agnosticism, nihilism, or Marxism.
Christianity, on the other hand, stands in complete contrast to humanism. The Christian worldview claims that there is a God, that he holds absolute authority over all of life, and that every individual and every institution of man is accountable to God. Therefore, the Christian worldview encompasses far beyond what we most often call the “spiritual.” A worldview shaped by the Bible changes one’s perception of life to see everything which is under the authority of God as a “spiritual” issue.
For at least a century, humanism has increasingly dominated our culture. The proposal was that through the insights of science and the advancement of Progress, a new society could be built on a completely secular basis. Human life was separated into two spheres. The public sphere was the realm of facts and strictly secular. The private sphere was the area of personal spirituality, faith, and values. Christians and other religious believers could continue to privately hold their faith but were to keep it separate from any public discussion—especially politics.
Christians assumed that they would be left alone to worship, work, build families, and educate their children all according to their values. Likewise, they would leave the world alone and keep their faith out of the public square. The problem is that worldviews are always mutually exclusive and demand dominance. Therefore, the church’s withdrawal from the public square was a rejection of the Christian worldview. As stated above, a biblical worldview will produce Christians who declare the lordship of Christ over all of life (Matt. 28:19). Retreating from the culture, checking our faith at the door every time we enter the public discussion, was an implicit rejection of Christ’s lordship and affirmation of the humanistic worldview. Once the church accepted the secular bargain it surrendered the culture to humanism.
Burn the Baskets
American society is rotting from the inside out with the disease of humanism. Until Christians recognize this we will remain locked into a losing battle. If we continue to see the problems of our society—abortion, breakdown of the family, education, politics—as isolated issues, then we will miss the true heart of the conflict.
One of the best recent examples has been the church’s divide over the issues of BLM/CRT and Christian Nationalism. On the one hand, conservative-leaning Christians have been vocal in opposition to the growing acceptance of the Neo-Marxist Critical Race Theory in our broader culture and churches. They were quick to condemn the widespread riots and violence over the summer of 2020. On the other hand, the liberal-leaning Christians have been more vocal in their opposition to Christian Nationalism and the many believers who have been seduced into the cult of Trump. Each side only sees part of the issue if they do not recognize that all of these developments are the results of humanism’s take-over of our culture.
The church relinquished responsibility to give answers—based on a Christian worldview—for racial reconciliation and inequities in society. So, people became discipled in the worldview of CRT and Robin DeAngelo. Likewise, when the church did not present a coherent public theology and strategy for Christian engagement in the public square, then Christians were discipled in their politics by the media and so on.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called his disciples to be salt and light in the world. He said, “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:15-16, CSB). Our culture has been in darkness since the church retreated into the personal sphere and placed a basket over the lamp. Once again, Schaeffer argued, “Most fundamentally, our culture, society, government, and law are in the condition they are in, not because of a conspiracy, but because the church has forsaken its duty to be the salt of the culture.” Let’s burn the baskets which we have used to forsake that which is both our duty and privilege.
Church! Heed the words of Jesus: “Be alert and strengthen what remains, which is about to die, for I have not found your works complete before my God” (Revelation 3:2).