Cultural Christianity, Again
A Brief Response to John Piper
Desiring God just republished a sermon (on Luke 11:14-26) from John Piper entitled, “No Neutrality: The Illusion of Indifference to Jesus.” Like most sermons from the patriarch of Minneapolis, it’s worth the read (or listen). The basic message: Christ or Satan? There is no middle ground presented to us in scripture. Choose a side. If you are not embracing Christ then, by default, you are embracing the devil. “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” And scripture tells us the only way to be “for” Christ, viz., acknowledgement of his divinity and resurrection, submission to his lordship, and reliance by Spirit wrought faith on his atoning work on the cross for our salvation. All good and true words.
Toward the end, however, Piper’s applications and cultural commentary become confused.
Therein, Piper treats cultural Christianity. “Let me say one final word by applying this to our culture in America today. Given the moral collapse of the culture around us, some people are saying that the ‘cultural Christianity’ of sixty years ago (for example) is a good thing and that we should work for its return.” Here’s Piper’s definition of cultural Christianity: “a culture in which the people are mainly not true Christians, but the culture is still shaped by the outward vestiges of the so-called ‘Judeo-Christian ethic.’”
Now, Piper is inserting something into this definition that suits his purposes, viz., that most people in a culturally Christian place are not true Christians. This is contestable, to be sure. Why does that necessarily follow from the definition? By all accounts, most people in this country sixty years ago claimed to be Christians and their claim is all we have to go on. Moreover, why would less Christians exist in that context than do in its opposite?
Further, the invocation of a “Judeo-Christian ethic” is suspect, a debatable term. As Justice John Paul Stevens, rightly in my view, insisted in his Van Orden v. Perry (2005) dissent, no such thing existed historically (i.e., late eighteenth century). It is a relatively new creation conjured up for certain short lived jurisprudential and political ends—as good scholarship has traced—and, therefore, shouldn’t be intricate to a definition of cultural Christianity, unless we are limiting our consideration of the idea only to more recent manifestations and accompanying propaganda.
Piper recalls his own memory of a culturally Christian childhood. No state-sanctioned abortion, no drag queen story hour, no genital mutilation of children, no celebration of divorce or promiscuity, and so on. The “cultural room” of Piper’s youth was “swept clean and in good order.” Sin wasn’t absent, but external conditions were better than they are today.
Neither Piper nor advocates of cultural Christianity would say that these cultural conditions were in themselves salvific, of course. That is not their nature or function. And so, the analysis should really end here: things were better when material or cultural conditions reflected and promoted Christianity, even if only externally. Life was better and the attainment of a culture saturated by the moral and ethical vestiges Christianity, if in spite of itself by the 1950s and 1960s, was objectively (on this front) better than what we have now, and not just for Christians.
Assume here all the required caveats that do no more than acknowledge fallen human nature and the imperfection of all socio-political orders—would that we had more conscious, actionable recognition of the latter right now! Then we might be able to inquire more freely about the finitude of our recent political experience and expectations. In a sane, learned setting, like that of the late eighteenth century, talk of Caesar and dead constitutions wouldn’t freak people out. But neither would the idea, the fact, that real law is always living, a suggestion anathema in most “conservative” circles. Exposed near daily is the fact that most participants in the discourse are tragically incapable of real thought. Another cause for lament, to be sure, if less so than the eternal damnation of souls.
In any case, Piper isn’t satisfied with limited, external analysis, with consideration of the temporal benefits of Christianity. Instead, he blends and confuses two modes of inquiry. Lament the passing of cultural Christianity with tears, he instructs. Not tears for the passing itself, but for the “eternal cost,” for the “millions of cultural Christians” that are in hell today. The charge for Christians from Piper is to “rescue people from the illusion that a clean, well-ordered life can save them.” Only Christ can. To which I say, amen. But cultural Christianity occupies no causal relationship to these things.
I agree with Piper that by definition, meaning by the dictates of our shared soteriology, many cultural Christians perished, just as many non-cultural Christians today will spend eternity in Hell suffering under the righteous wrath of God. And that’s the point. On this analysis, what’s the difference? We just described any period in history whether within Christendom or without.
Doubt, apostasy, and heterodoxy, these things are perennial for the church in any context of external, material conditions. The same goes for self-deceit and false assurance. (See Acts 5:1-11. Ananias and Saphira weren’t casualties of cultural Christianity.) Perennial too is the illusion that mere participation or membership in the church is in itself salvific. The same goes for enjoyment of cultural conditions favorable to Christianity. Again, this analysis is not getting us anywhere with the topic at hand. It is a confusion of categories, of means and ends.
Piper is right. There is no neutrality, neither soteriologically nor culturally. Some religion, some orthodoxy, some ethic, some allegiance will dictate both. Man is a moral creature and possesses the sense of divinity. In other words, he is inescapably religious. He will worship something. He is also social, made for communion, not only with God, but with other creatures. We have two dimensions, two modes of existence, then that cannot be bifurcated just as man’s body and soul cannot be separated (except in death). And yet, the two parts of this body-soul dualism can be analyzed separately, if we are to make any sense of it.
Man’s soul is inclined to worship but so too is his body, his material existence. Hence, among other things, the sacraments. The soul and body mutually inform one another. This is how God made us. And all thoughts, words, and deeds should reflect and honor the Creator as a matter of course. It is a dictate of duty and justice apart from consideration of our salvation in Christ. Were no redemption offered the duty would remain given our origin and status.
A decidedly modern view is that Christian cultural conditions impede true religion or heartfelt, genuine faith. The historical Protestant position is the exact opposite. (So too did our theological forbears reject the idea that civil authorities only care for bodies and not for souls, or that a material harm principle was sufficient for ethics.)
Let’s begin with law. It is not downstream of culture but rather forms it or, at least, exists in some sort of mutual exchange with it (see Obergefell). This might be most true in a common law context. At bare minimum, and most broadly, law itself could be conceived as a cultural artifact. Some people would say it is even the sine qua non of an ethne or nation. If the parameters of right action must be shared for a people to be deserving of the name, what does law do subsequently? It instructs, it catechizes. Law is pedagogical. And, indeed, it is even prepatory for salvation insofar as good law impresses on people the things of natural theology or civil righteousness. The old supposition was that men would struggle to grasp higher truths sitting above reason if they lacked the basics of reality.
Surely our present, very anxious culture of death and metaphysical subversion illustrates that epistemological chaos is not conducive to mass conversion. An accelerationist would seek to compound the internal moral contradictions of our day, but a Christian cannot. Perhaps, at a future date when the insanity of our moment fully impresses itself, a radical and abrupt pivot will occur. But now we are speculating. The point is that law directs people morally, and there is no neutrality there. People are either being pushed toward Christ or Satan, and many will become true believers on that basis. That is, because legal pedagogy, whilst not itself instilling genuine belief, erects the bounds of plausibility. What becomes “obvious” and unimpeachable is merely endured by the cynical few but truly embraced by the earnest many. Most people are simple, weak, and communal, not radical individuals. They go with the flow and end up really, truly adopting predominant views and virtues.
On to cultural conditions, those things that exceed rules of actions promulgated by authorities. Social custom and stigma arguably wield more power on the ground as they fill in the gaps necessarily not comprehended by law—the trivialities, behaviors, assumptions outside its scope. Note that John Stuart Mill was hellbent on eradicating stigma for this reason. Christian prejudices are bad for libertines. Customs and stigma can, in a sense, precede law and confirm law, or augment it properly.
When the parameters of acceptable behavior are Christian, people act more Christian, obviously. Christian things, practices, and speech are normalized. Christian customs and stigma are both objectively good and, again, prepatory for the acceptance of higher truths grasped by faith. When people are genuine Christians in a culturally Christian society, it is celebrated. Non-believers may be able to get along undetected, but they must at least fake it. They still have to observe fast days and swear on the Bible to hold office. They still can’t shop on Sundays. Socio-politically, this is all that is required. For example, men don’t have to like that murder is illegal, they just have to comply. More often than not, the fact that murder is illegal will convince them that it is also immoral. Laws, official or unofficial, act upon both the intellect and the will.
To expect more than the production of civil righteousness of cultural power would be to confuse that mode of being with the church itself. It cannot save, but it can prepare. Indeed, the absence of cultural and legal conditions that reflect, expect Christianity, and point to the Gospel should be considered a failure, a bad culture. (Stephen Wolfe’s chapter covering much of this is wildly underappreciated.)
To be clear, Piper is not celebrating the demise of cultural Christianity with a Russell Moore “good riddance.” But like most Evangelicals, he is confused. He misses the necessity of cultural Christianity because he wrongly assumes its causal relation to problems that are not unique to it but perennial.
Piper is famously a big fan of Jonathan Edwards. Humanly speaking, what kind of culture was receptive to the revivalism of the mid-eighteenth century? A Christian one. For those critics out there, who insist that there is no political solution to our present ills and that only a new, spontaneous Awakening will save us, should ponder this historical fact deeply.
Cultural Christianity is not neutrality. It is not indifference to Jesus. It is, according to its mode, purpose, and end, the proper recognition of Jesus and is, at bare minimum, an encouragement to civil righteousness. Further, it points to the Gospel; it is oriented to true religion. Vestiges of these conditions still exist in America, and our country still features, at least professedly, a sizeable Christian population—regionally this is even more pronounced. In some places, a Christian civil righteousness is still preferred in bids for cultural or political leadership.
Where church attendance is valued, the Bible is read in schools, or Christ’s name is invoked in a public prayer, the authority of scripture is normalized, both its moral and salvific elements. This is good, and far better than its alternative. Why would we prefer a social environment that is hostile to the Gospel or the instituted church? Only unfalsifiable myths that persecution will produce more, and better Christians animates that supposition. At bottom, the common error is, in fact, to expect too much of cultural conditions and thereby mistake their function and overestimate their causality.
And at this point, surely, we must recognize that the “traditional family values” of Mayberry are better than the pagan values of Sodom. The former cannot save, but neither can the latter; but the former is much better for everyone.
Image: George Whitefield Preaching in Bolton, June 1750