Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
We live in an age marked by infantile ingratitude…that means we live in an age when we do not really know how to live at all. Ingratitude has dehumanized us. 

In the times of turmoil in which we live, various candidates suggest themselves as ways of capturing the essence of our epoch: the age of anxiety, the age of identity politics, the age of polarization. All touch on some obvious aspect of our current struggles. But perhaps a better title might be the age of ingratitude. This captures a deep but often unnoticed pathology of our troubled era.
Take, for example, the books, blogs, and tweets devoted to being unthankful for anything and everything. We might dub this the Ingratitude Industry, not only because of the sheer quantity of ungratefulness, but also because of the lucrative careers that are made by selling ingratitude as a commodity. Strange to tell, Christianity—a religion predicated on divine grace and corresponding human gratitude—offers numerous examples. Many a career has been made in recent years by attacking the churches and institutions of “white evangelicalism.” And many such careers belong to those of whom we would never have heard if they had not obtained their degrees or platforms from the very “white evangelicalism” that forms the raw material of the commodified ingratitude they now sell to the public as prophetic utterances.
But the Ingratitude Industry is not confined to erstwhile religious types. As an immigrant, I love my homeland, but I also love the land that has given me a home. It seems to me odd, therefore, that so many Americans are obviously and vocally ungrateful for their country. Odd, too, that so many of these anti-American Americans want to throw the borders open—not, as one might expect from their rhetoric, to allow those of us trapped in such an apparently irredeemable and systemically racist country to escape from it, but to let others enter the same. Others who, it seems, would be rather grateful for the opportunities for which many Americans have such contempt. Ingratitude in such circumstances is not merely ugly. It is incoherent. But so is it always with those who insist on biting the hand that feeds them.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, November 22, 2022
We need to see gender theory as it parlays into trans activism in the same light—a pseudo-scholarly justification for destroying parental rights and exposing children to sexual perverts and medical profiteers.

Mermaids, the UK activist charity pressing for transgender treatment for minors, has been in the headlines recently. First, the group has been trying to reverse the charitable status of the LGB Alliance. The Alliance is an organization that lobbies for the rights of LGB people has yet fallen foul of Mermaids because of its opposition to trans ideology. All is not well in the world of the rainbow coalition.
Second, a Mermaids board member was forced to resign last week after it emerged that he is an apologist for pedophilia. In an article at Unherd, Julia Bindel (herself a lesbian) outlines in gruesome detail the views of the board member concerned, Dr. Jacob Breslow. In fact, let us call them “perversions” not mere “views” because that is what they are, as her quotations from his work makes graphically obvious.
Breslow, is (inevitably) a professor of “gender studies” at the London School of Economics where his profile on the school’s website is most instructive and raises two obvious questions.
The first is this: to what extent are the current iterations of gender studies, particularly in the manner in which they address transgenderism, really just a means by which adults are able to indulge their pedophile fantasies? It is interesting that Breslow is interested in “the queer life of children’s desires.” By that, he does not mean that he is interested in the typically unformed and often confused sexual desires of young children as they enter puberty and settle into sexual adulthood. Gender theory denies any norms for sexual desires and can therefore grant normative authority to any and all sexual desires it chooses.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Monday, November 14, 2022
The message of these events is clear: The terms of belonging to civil society have changed. In the early 20th century, debates about Christian orthodoxy took place within an America where the basic elements of Christian moral teaching were generally accepted. Today, such thinking stands at odds with the politics of identity that dominates elite institutions. That sets the scene for external culture war and internal civil war.

The website of Allendale United Methodist Church in St. Petersburg, Fla., says the congregation “is committed to anti-racism and radical solidarity with folx on the margins.” Last month the church featured a “special guest” for the children’s sermon at weekly worship. Isaac Simmons, who uses the stage name “Ms. Penny Cost,” donned a high-slit sequin dress, denounced capitalism and praised liberation theology. In a follow-up post after the event, Rev. Andy Oliver, the church’s pastor, wrote: “Ms. Penny Cost was an angel in heels appearing to shepherds in the fields on the night shift, telling them that Good News had arrived on their doorstep. What was once the margins is the center.”
Churches are increasingly in the middle of cultural and moral controversies. Mr. Oliver’s denomination has dramatically fragmented over issues of sexuality, with many congregations leaving to join the Global Methodist Church, a new denomination founded in 2022 as a conservative alternative.
The Catholic Church is being torn apart, too. The Synodal Path in Germany, an ongoing national consultation of bishops and laity, has pressed for progressive changes in doctrine and discipline. Traditional Catholics distrust Pope Francis’s Synod on Synodality, a global listening effort, as a project to surreptitiously change church teaching, which has seemingly over-represented the input of disaffected laity.
The same applies to religious schools. Last year a priest at the University of Notre Dame wore a Pride stole while attending a “Coming Out Day Celebration” sponsored by PrismND, the university’s “official LGBTQ+ undergraduate student organization.” The school’s student newspaper, the Irish Rover, recently reported that a faculty member was openly offering support to students seeking abortions.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, November 8, 2022
The winners and losers may change, but the game is always the same: to dethrone whatever today’s dominant categories might be, whether of heterosexuality, whiteness, or the gender binary. It is categorical stability, not the categories themselves, that is the real enemy.

In a recent New York Times opinion column, Pamela Paul makes an impassioned argument for why we should continue to use the word “gay” rather than “queer.” Not all gay people identify as queer, she correctly claims, and the Q-word’s rise to dominance thereby risks downgrading or eliminating them. Paul is not the first to notice this issue as affecting gay individuals. And her point is similar to that made by gender-critical feminists such as Germaine Greer and J. K. Rowling, who see trans ideology as destroying female identity, and therefore as inflicting harm upon women.
Who could have seen any of this coming? The answer, of course, is anybody who was actually paying attention. The theoretical foundations of the sexual revolution always and unabashedly aimed at dismantling traditional sexual codes and identities. And there is a fundamental incoherence in an alliance that requires affirmation of the gender binary in the L, the G, and the B whilst emphatically denying it in the T and Q.
The problem is, of course, that despite the rhetoric of inclusion with which queer theory cloaks itself, queerness is not very inclusive. It is not the category that includes all other categories. Quite the contrary. It is the category that destabilizes, subverts, and thereby ultimately excludes all other categories. A more imperious, imperialist, and all-corrosive concept is actually difficult to imagine. Indeed, it is hard to put the issue more pointedly than Paul does herself:
Queer theory is about deliberately breaking down normative categories around gender and sex, particularly binary ones like men and women, straight and gay. Saying you’re queer could mean you’re gay; it could mean you’re straight; it could mean you’re undecided about your gender or that you prefer not to say. Saying you’re queer could mean as little as having kissed another girl your sophomore year at college. It could mean you valiantly plowed through the prose of Judith Butler in a course on queerness in the Elizabethan theater.
In short, queer theory means that you could be saying anything you want about yourself and are therefore communicating nothing stable or meaningful at all.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
And now we have the apparent arrival of gender ideology into the mix. I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I predict that even this will be blamed on the conservatives and the traditionalists because they were intransigent and not loving enough to the first iteration of Revoice. But whatever the exculpatory rhetoric used, one thing is now clear: to stay with Revoice is not merely to legitimate more than subtle distinctions about sexual identity. In truth, it is to lend support to the anthropological chaos currently gripping American society.

In the days after the Nashville Statement was launched in 2017, several friends contacted me to ask why I had not signed it. I had a number of reasons for not doing so, none of which had anything to do with having changed my position on the issues the statement addressed.
As a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, I subscribe by vow to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. I have yet to come across a contemporary moral issue that cannot be addressed using the positive teaching contained therein. Thus, some years earlier I declined to sign a statement against child abuse, not on the grounds that I am actually in favor of such abuse, of course, but simply because I already affirm via the Westminster Standards an ethical position which by implication makes my position on the matter clear.
That reason for me not signing Nashville still holds, though that should not be read as a criticism of anyone whose conscience led them to do so. I am also a believer in Christian freedom on such issues.
Another reason for not signing, however, no longer applies. That was my concern in 2017 that the dialogue with those now dubbed “Side B” would be prematurely foreclosed by such a document. “Side B” activists identify as LGBTQ in orientation but say they are committed to refrain from sexual sin through LGBTQ behaviors.” “Side A” in this scheme refers to those who claim a sexual orientation as LGBTQ and also engage in LGBTQ sexual relationships and behaviors.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
The genre of romantic tragedy depends upon a specific moral framework. So does the genre of romantic comedy. But the sexual revolution has obliterated that moral framework. 

The new gay rom-com, Bros, has bombed at the box office. Director Nicholas Stoller and star Billy Eichner, in full Nietzschean ressentiment mode, are in little doubt about why the film flopped: homophobic weirdos refusing to go and see it. The indignation reveals much about our immediate cultural moment. It is typical of political discourse today: Each side ascribes its failure to find popular support to the general population’s ignorance or depravity (or both). That conveniently precludes the need for any soul-searching while reinforcing a sense of moral and intellectual superiority. Hillary Clinton offered a master class in this approach after the 2016 presidential election, and the play is now well established across the political divide.
In the case of movies, one might respond to Stoller and Eichner by saying that entertainers are supposed to provide products that the viewing public wishes to see. It might surprise the team behind the didactic Bros that many of us watch movies to be entertained, not to be preached at, seeing them as brief, trivial moments of escape from the drudge of daily life, not an opportunity to (as the Victorians would have said) “improve” ourselves. But even though it has proved an abject commercial failure, the movie is nonetheless instructive in how our culture is changing. And both its production values and its failure are likely signs not of the LGBTQ movement’s influence stalling, but of its remarkable success.
First, there is the fact that the entire cast of the film identifies as LGBTQ. “Faking it” was once the very essence of acting. It did not matter that Laurence Olivier was not a North African when he played the lead in Othello. Nor was it of concern that Leonard Nimoy, despite not being the offspring of a Vulcan father and human mother, nevertheless played Mr. Spock in the original iteration of Star Trek. Acting was acting, a game of pretend and make-believe. Demands that casting reflect real life—or at least real life as the tastes of identity politics require on any given day—reveals just how obsessed with faculty lounge politics the captains of our culture industry have become. That acting is no longer about “faking it” is patently absurd, a basic contradiction in terms, and yet it is applauded unconditionally by the very people involved in the acting industry. To them it not merely makes sense but is positively virtuous. That indicates how the new politics of identity has colonized minds.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
This case is most instructive regarding our wider culture. It is another example of the way in which our politics is predicated on a therapeutic notion of personhood and the rhetoric of a psychologized, ever-expanding definition of violence and victimhood. And it exposes the fact that progressive Christianity is really just another discourse of power. 

For anyone wondering how traditional Christianity is going to fare in the culture in future, even within many Christian institutions, the disturbing tale of Dr. Bradley Nassif, formerly of North Park University, an institution formally connected to the theologically conservative Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), offers an interesting case in point.
Dr. Nassif is a well-known Orthodox theologian, a respected scholar, and a gracious contributor to ecumenical dialogues between Protestantism and Orthodoxy. Such is his standing that the Washington Post consulted him for commentary on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its implications for religious liberty. As a Lebanese American, he is a member of an ethnic minority. And until recently, he was also the only tenured Orthodox faculty member in the Bible department of an American evangelical institution. None of this protected him from dismissal, however.
In May 2021, North Park University (NPU) discontinued its Christian Studies Department (CSD) due to low enrollment, and consequently dismissed four tenured faculty, including Dr. Nassif. However, an investigation by a neutral outside organization demonstrated that the CSD was in fact in a strong financial position. Three of the four professors were rehired, but Dr. Nassif was left out in the cold. Now, adjunct faculty teach his courses.
The reason is no mystery. Nassif maintains that all this occurred because he expressed his reasoned, orthodox views on marriage and human sexuality. He was the only faculty member in CSD who went on record in support of the ECC’s views of marriage and sexuality, and held that they should be included in the curriculum. Certain members of the faculty and administration responded to his perspective with hostility. And this stand on sexuality became a constitutive part of why he was dismissed.
Dr. Nassif’s lawyer has obtained sworn declarations supporting this claim from NPU’s AAUP president, Nancy Arneson, and former provost, Michael Emerson. While North Park is affiliated with a denomination, the ECC, that upholds traditional views of sex, sexuality, and marriage, it appears that North Park does not want these views taught in the classroom even as one option among many, let alone as the binding truth on all people. And Dr. Nassif’s objection to this has cost him his career. Dr. Emerson has offered evidence, stating that representatives of the university attempted to “shame and silence Dr. Nassif for standing up for the ECC position on human sexuality. This was evidenced in both public and private meetings.”
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Monday, September 12, 2022
Some of this was no doubt due to her quiet but serious Christian faith. A friend who once had the privilege of being a royal chaplain and spending a weekend at Balmoral Castle confirmed that the conversations he had with the queen revealed her to be a thoughtful, devout Christian. As a humble Christian she took her earthly vocation seriously, placing the needs of the office and of the people she ruled before her own.

The death of Queen Elizabeth II marks a watershed for Britain and for those of us who have never known any other head of our state—as is true for any lifelong British citizen under the age of seventy. Remarkably, she began her reign while Winston Churchill was prime minister and then lived to see a further fourteen individuals hold that high office. Without question she saw more change in British society than any of her predecessors, and throughout it all she remained a calm and steadfast figurehead for the nation.
Growing up, I never had much time for the monarchy. With the exception of the Silver Jubilee in 1977, marked as it was by street parties and celebration, the monarchy rarely touched my life in any real way. Furthermore, as a lower-middle-class schoolboy, I possessed all the usual insecurities: a fear of the working class and a resentment of the nobility. But over the years my respect for the queen grew. In a world that was increasingly embracing casual disrespect, exhibiting a perverse pleasure in repudiating any notion of duty, and accepting uncouth behavior among its ruling classes, she stood out as reflecting a better, more civilized philosophy of public life.
Indeed, she lived long enough to become an anachronism, though not in the sense that republicans typically mean when they argue that monarchy is merely the unnecessary and backward residue of an earlier feudal age. She became an anachronism because of the kind of person she was.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
The Apologists and Augustine both offer a vision of the church in a hostile culture that calls on the church to be the church and on Christians to be constructive members of the wider society in which they are placed. Some might respond that failing to engage in aggressive and direct confrontation looks rather like defeatism or withdrawal. But is it?

Learn from the Ancient Church
Traditional Christians are typically those who take history seriously. We have a faith rooted in historical claims (supremely the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the events and actions of his life) and see our religious communities as standing in a line extending back through time to Pentecost and beyond. Thus, when faced with peculiar challenges, Christians often look to the past to find hope with regard to their experience in the present. Typically, Protestants look to the Reformation, and Catholics look to the High Middle Ages. If only we might be able to return to that world, we tell ourselves, all might be well.
Anyone with a realistic sense of history knows that such returns are at best virtually impossible. First, neither the Reformation nor the High Middle Ages were the golden eras that later religious nostalgia would have us believe. The societies in which the church operated in those periods are gone forever, thanks in large part to the ways in which technology has reshaped the world in which we now live.
If we are to find a precedent for our times, I believe that we must go further back in time, to the second century and the immediately post-apostolic church. There, Christianity was a little-understood, despised, marginal sect. It was suspected of being immoral and seditious. Eating the body and blood of their god and calling each other “brother” and “sister” even when married made Christians and Christianity sound highly dubious to outsiders. And the claim that “Jesus is Lord!” was on the surface a pledge of loyalty that derogated from that owed to Caesar Lamentation for Christianity’s cultural marginalization. That is much like the situation of the church today. For example, we are considered irrational bigots for our stance on gay marriage. In the aftermath of the Trump presidency, it has become routine to hear religious conservatives in general, and evangelical Christians in particular, decried as representing a threat to civil society. Like our spiritual ancestors in the second century, we too are deemed immoral and seditious.
Of course, the analogy is not perfect. The church in the second century faced a pagan world that had never known Christianity. We live in a world that is de-Christianizing, often self-consciously and intentionally. That means that the opposition is likely better informed and more proactive than in the ancient church. Yet a glance at the church’s strategy in the second century is still instructive.
First, it is clear from the New Testament and from early noncanonical texts like the Didache that community was central to church life. The Acts of the Apostles presents a picture of a church where Christians cared for and served each other. The Didache sets forth a set of moral prescriptions, including a ban on abortion and infanticide, that served to distinguish the church from the world around. Christian identity was clearly a very practical, down-toearth, and day-to-day thing.
This makes perfect sense. Underlying much of the argument of previous chapters—indeed, underlying the notion of the social imaginary—is that identity is shaped by the communities to which we belong. And we all have various identities—I am a husband, a father, a teacher, an Englishman, an immigrant, a writer, a rugby fan, in addition to being a Christian. And the strongest identities I have, forming my strongest intuitions, derive from the strongest communities to which I belong. And that means that the church needs to be the strongest community to which we each belong.
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Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
It might sound trite, but a large part of the church’s witness to the world is simply being the church in worship. Paul himself comments that when an unbeliever accidentally turns up at a church service, he should be struck by the otherworldly holiness of what is going on. The most powerful witness to the gospel is the church herself, simply going about the business of worship.

The world has shifted under our feet. New notions about selfhood challenge Christians’ views, and we’ve found ourselves in a hostile place where it’s dangerous to challenge the new status quo.
To object to same-sex marriage, for example, is in the moral register of the day not substantially different from being a racist. The era when Christians could disagree with the broader convictions of the secular world and yet still find themselves respected as decent members of society is coming to an end, if indeed it hasn’t ended already. The truth is that the last vestiges of a social imaginary shaped by Christianity are rapidly vanishing, and many of us are even now living as strangers in a strange new world.
The revolution in selfhood, particularly as it manifests itself in the various facets of the sexual revolution, is set to exert pressure on the lives of all of us, from kindergarten education to workplace policies on pronouns. Christians might still be able to run, so to speak, and avoid some of these things for a period of time, but they cannot hide forever. Sooner or later every single one of us is likely to be faced with a challenging situation generated by the modern notion of selfhood. And this means that for all of us the questions of how we should live and what we should do when facing pressure to conform are gaining in urgency. Here are six ways Christians should respond to this new world.

Recognize Our Complicity

The first thing we need to do is understand our complicity in the expressive individualism of our day. This statement needs a little nuance, however, because expressive individualism is not all bad. We do have feelings; we do have an inner psychological space that deeply shapes who we are.
Historically, while Rousseau is developing his notion of the self as rooted in inner sentiments, Jonathan Edwards is writing The Religious Affections and exploring that inner space from an explicitly Christian perspective. Expressive individualism is correct in affirming the importance of psychology for who we are and in stressing the universal dignity of all human beings. We might also add that this accenting of the individual is consonant with the existential urgency of the New Testament in the way it stresses the importance of personal faith as a response to the gospel. Only I can believe for me. And that places the “I” in a most important place.
But there are also problems here. Think, for example, of freedom of religion. This is a social virtue. What Christian wants to live in a country where the church is persecuted and where worshiping God is considered a crime? Yet countries where there’s freedom are also typically countries where there are many churches, even religions, to which one can choose to belong.
Within 10 miles of where I’m writing this book in my study at home in Pennsylvania, there are dozens of churches—Presbyterian, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, Baptist, Roman Catholic. And even the terms “Presbyterian,” “Lutheran,” and “Baptist” cover a variety of different denominations. This is the result of religious freedom—a good thing—but it also has the effect of making religion a marketplace where the congregant is the customer and the church the vendor. This means the authority in religion tilts toward the congregant, the customer, in a way that panders to the felt needs of the psychological self.
To make the point more sharply, it’s worth noting a comment once made by Philip Rieff: “Formerly, if men were miserable, they went to church, so as to find the rationale of their misery; they did not expect to be happy, this idea is Greek, not Christian or Jewish.”
Such a notion is incomprehensible today: we as Christians intuitively go to church to feel good—perhaps to meet friends or to sing uplifting songs (whether traditional or contemporary) or to have our minds stimulated by a good sermon or our ears edified by beautiful music. Prayers, personal and corporate, tend to focus on the alleviation of misery, not on being enabled to understand it. We tend to go to—to choose!—the church that fits with what makes us personally feel good. This is true whether we are, say, emotional types to whom a Pentecostal service might appeal; lovers of artistic beauty, who might be naturally drawn to high Anglicanism, Catholicism, or Orthodoxy; or (like me) a bookish type, for whom the cerebral sermons of Reformed churches are appealing.
Perhaps I’ve overstated things here. But most of us, if we’re honest with ourselves, would have to admit that our choice of church is not entirely driven by theological conviction. Personal taste plays a role, and that is shaped by the expectations of the psychologized, therapeutic society in which we live, move, and have our being.
This also connects to another way in which the church has become more akin to the world than she often realizes: the cult of personal happiness. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being happy, of course. But the nature of happiness has changed over the years to being akin to an inner sense of psychological well-being. Once we start thinking of happiness in those terms, the vision of the Christian life laid out in Paul’s letters, particularly 2 Corinthians, becomes incomprehensible. We may not all be explicitly committed to the prosperity gospel, but many of us think of divine blessing in terms of our individual happiness. That is a result of the psychological, therapeutic culture seeping into our Christianity.
There are other areas of Christian complicity as well. How many churches have taken a firm stand on no-fault divorce, a concept predicated on a view of marriage that sees it as being of no significance once the personal happiness of one or both parties is not being met? How many Christians allow their emotions to govern their ethics when a beloved relative or friend comes out as gay or transgender? We’re all complicit at some level in this strange new world.
It’s not easy to see how we can address this, but a few thoughts suggest themselves.
First, we need to examine ourselves, individually and corporately, to see in what ways we’ve compromised the gospel with the spirit of this age. Then we need to repent, call out to the Lord for grace, and seek to reform our beliefs, attitudes, intuitions, and practices accordingly. Nothing less is required for a true reformation at this point.
Second, an awareness of our complicity should cultivate a level of humility in how we engage with those with whom we disagree on these matters. There can be no place for the pharisaic prayer whereby we thank the Lord that we’re not like other men.
Third, being aware of our complicity at least allows us to engage in the future in appropriate self-criticism and self-policing. We cannot help but choose the church in which we worship. Even the cradle Catholic today chooses to continue to attend church because there are many other available options, including not attending church at all. But having chosen the church, we can discipline ourselves to be committed to that church, stick with it, and refuse to allow ourselves to move on simply because of some trivial issue or matter of personal taste. This will be far from perfect and far from easy, but I see no other option than self-awareness and self-discipline in this matter.

Learn from the Ancient Church

Traditional Christians are typically those who take history seriously. We have a faith rooted in historical claims (supremely the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the events and actions of his life) and see our religious communities as standing in a line extending back through time to Pentecost and beyond. Thus, when faced with peculiar challenges, Christians often look to the past to find hope for their experience in the present. Typically, Protestants look to the Reformation and Catholics look to the High Middle Ages. If only we might be able to return to that world, we tell ourselves, all might be well.
Anyone with a realistic sense of history knows that such returns are at best virtually impossible. First, neither the Reformation nor the High Middle Ages were the golden eras that later religious nostalgia would have us believe. The societies in which the church operated in those periods are gone forever, thanks in large part to the ways technology has reshaped the world in which we now live.
If we’re to find a precedent for our times, I believe we must go further back, to the second century and the immediately post-apostolic church. There, Christianity was a little-understood, despised, marginal sect. It was suspected of being immoral and seditious. Eating the body and blood of their god and calling each other “brother” and “sister” even when married made Christians and Christianity sound highly dubious to outsiders. And the claim that “Jesus is Lord!” was on the surface a pledge of loyalty that derogated from that owed to Caesar. That’s much like the situation of the church today.
For example, we’re considered irrational bigots for our stance on gay marriage. In the aftermath of the Trump presidency, it has become routine to hear religious conservatives in general, and evangelical Christians in particular, decried as representing a threat to civil society. Like our spiritual ancestors in the second century, we too are deemed immoral and seditious.
Of course, the analogy isn’t perfect. The church in the second century faced a pagan world that had never known Christianity. We live in a world that is de-Christianizing, often self-consciously and intentionally. That means the opposition is likely better informed and more proactive than in the ancient church. Yet a glance at the church’s strategy in the second century is still instructive.
First, it’s clear from the New Testament and from early non-canonical texts like the Didache that community was central to church life. The Acts of the Apostles presents a picture of a church where Christians cared for and served each other. The Didache sets forth a set of moral prescriptions, including a ban on abortion and infanticide, that served to distinguish the church from the surrounding world. Christian identity was clearly a very practical, down-to-earth, and day-to-day thing.
This makes perfect sense. Underlying the notion of the social imaginary is that identity is shaped by the communities to which we belong. And we all have various identities—I’m a husband, a father, a teacher, an Englishman, an immigrant, a writer, and a rugby fan, in addition to being a Christian. The strongest identities I have, forming my strongest intuitions, derive from the strongest communities to which I belong. And that means the church needs to be the strongest community to which we each belong.
Ironically, the LGBT+ community is proof of this point: the reason they’ve moved from the margins to center stage is intimately connected to the strong communities they formed while on the margins. This is why lamentation for Christianity’s cultural marginalization, while legitimate, cannot be the sole response of the church to the current social convulsions she is experiencing. Lament, for sure—we should lament that the world isn’t as it should be, as many of the psalms teach us—but also organize. Become a community. By this, the Lord says, shall all men know that you are my disciples, by the love you have for each other (John 13:35). And that means community.
This brings me to the second lesson we can learn from the early church. Community in terms of its day-to-day details might look different in a city than in a rural village, or in the United States compared to the United Kingdom. But there are certain elements the church in every place will share: worship and fellowship. Gathering together on the Lord’s Day, praying, singing God’s praise, hearing the Word read and preached, celebrating baptism and the Lord’s Supper, giving materially to the church’s work—these are things all Christians should do when gathered together.
It might sound trite, but a large part of the church’s witness to the world is simply being the church in worship. Paul himself comments that when an unbeliever accidentally turns up at a church service, he should be struck by the otherworldly holiness of what is going on. The most powerful witness to the gospel is the church herself, simply going about the business of worship.
Many Christians talk of engaging the culture. In fact, the culture is most dramatically engaged when the church presents it with another culture, another form of community, rooted in her liturgical worship practices and manifested in the loving community that exists both in and beyond the worship service. Many talk of the culture war between Christians and secularism, and certainly the Bible itself uses martial language to describe the spiritual conflict of this present age. But perhaps “cultural protest” is a way of better translating that idea into modern idiom, given the reality and history of physical warfare in our world. The church protests the wider culture by offering a true vision of what it means to be a human being made in the image of God.
This approach is certainly hinted at in second-century Christian literature. The so-called Greek Apologists, such as Justin Martyr, addressed the Roman Empire from a Christian perspective. What’s so interesting when compared to some of the ways many Christians, right and left, do so today is how respectful these ancient apologists were. They didn’t spend their time denouncing the evils of the emperor and his court. Rather, they argued positively that Christians made the best citizens, the best parents, the best servants, the best neighbors, the best employees, and that they should thus be left alone and allowed to carry on with their day-to-day lives without being harassed by the authorities. Of course, there were limits to what they could do to participate in civic life: if asked to sacrifice to the emperor as to a god, they would have to refuse. But beyond such demands, they could be good members of the Roman community.
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