Jonathan Merritt illuminates the spiritual ethos of this new generation of believers who engage the world with Christ-centered faith but an un-polarized political perspective. Through personal stories and biblically rooted commentary this scion of a leading evangelical family takes a close, thoughtful look at the changing religious and political environment, addressing such divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage, environmental use and care, race, war, poverty, and the imbalance of world wealth. Through Scripture, the examples of Jesus, and personal defining faith experiences, he distills the essential truths at the core of a Christian faith that is now just coming of age.
Jonathan Merritt illuminates the spiritual ethos of this new generation of believers who engage the world with Christ-centered faith but an un-polarized political perspective. Through personal stories and biblically rooted commentary this scion of a leading evangelical family takes a close, thoughtful look at the changing religious and political environment, addressing such divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage, environmental use and care, race, war, poverty, and the imbalance of world wealth. Through Scripture, the examples of Jesus, and personal defining faith experiences, he distills the essential truths at the core of a Christian faith that is now just coming of age.
A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars
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Overview
Jonathan Merritt illuminates the spiritual ethos of this new generation of believers who engage the world with Christ-centered faith but an un-polarized political perspective. Through personal stories and biblically rooted commentary this scion of a leading evangelical family takes a close, thoughtful look at the changing religious and political environment, addressing such divisive issues as abortion, gay marriage, environmental use and care, race, war, poverty, and the imbalance of world wealth. Through Scripture, the examples of Jesus, and personal defining faith experiences, he distills the essential truths at the core of a Christian faith that is now just coming of age.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781455519279 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Nashville |
| Publication date: | 05/08/2012 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 494 KB |
About the Author
You can follow him, but please, only on twitter: @jonathanmerritt
Read an Excerpt
A Faith of Our Own
Following Jesus Beyond the Culture WarsBy Merritt, Jonathan
FaithWords
Copyright © 2012 Merritt, JonathanAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780446557238
ZERO
Read This First
The slip fell out of my wallet and fluttered, like a down feather, to the floor. I bent over and felt the waitress’s eyes follow me as I reached for the narrow, folded paper. What might be mistaken for a receipt was an invaluable reminder I take with me everywhere I go.
I first began carrying it a few years ago during a struggle with my faith. I was trying to reconcile the Jesus I was encountering in the New Testament with the one I, and so many Americans, claimed to follow. In the Bible, I kept meeting a Jesus who was radical and revolutionary. But many “Christians” I knew worshiped a domesticated Savior—one whose message was easy to swallow and even easier to live by. Their Jesus hated the same people they hated, voted like they did, and made few difficult demands. I developed a nagging sense that the Bible’s Jesus might not care for the Jesus many Americans believed in.
I confessed my uneasiness over dinner with an old schoolmate. As a good friend does, he spoke less than he listened. When I finished my lament, he offered one piece of advice. He told me to purchase a copy of Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, recognized by many as the greatest German writer who ever lived. He told me to place my frustrations on the shelf for a few days while I read it, or rather let it read me. I agreed.
The next day, I brought home a translation of the heavy tome and dove headfirst into its pages. The plot of this poetic play revolves around a scholar and sorcerer, Dr. Faust, who exchanges his soul for human knowledge. Goethe’s rhythmic words are lush and hypnotizing, and I was mesmerized from the first act. In the opening scene, the character Wagner claims he possesses great knowledge but desires to know everything. Faust’s response caught me off guard:
That which you have received as heritage, now rediscover for yourself and thus you will make it your own.
I stopped, giving the words time to settle.
Then I read them again.
And again.
I wrote them down and tucked the wisdom into my wallet.
Faust’s words felt like a signpost pointing me forward in my spiritual journey. As a follower of Jesus, I can cherish the faith of my father and grandfathers. But I also need to take hold of it myself.
A writer friend of mine, John, had a similar experience a few years ago while sitting by a campfire. Having grown up in a Christian home, he’d practiced the faith of his parents, but it was just that—his parents’ faith. As flickering flames illuminated the night sky, he asked God to make Himself real to him. And God did.
An insatiable desire to read the Bible welled up from his innermost parts, and John began to devour the Scriptures. Old passages took on new life, and John experienced the Jesus who is, not the Jesus he’d seen from afar through his parents’ religion. He began serving others, praying with others, and started a Bible study for young Christians. The faith of his father was now his.
Maybe John discovered something different or perhaps he had willingly accepted the same faith, now that it was not forced on him. He rediscovered a faith that had been handed to him, but now it was his own.
In the sixteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus asks Peter who people believe Jesus is. Peter replies that there is some confusion among the masses. Some think Jesus is John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others say He may be Jeremiah or another prophet who’s come back to life.
None of these answers was correct, and Jesus asks Peter, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
This is a defining question posed to every generation and culture. Jesus was not just speaking to Peter. Each successive generation of Christians must give their own answer to Jesus’ frank inquiry. Who do we say Jesus is? Our answer cannot be drawn from what others are saying about Jesus or what our parents taught us about Him. We must stare Jesus in the face and offer our own response.
Peter seems to know precisely who Jesus is: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Peter, the first-century Jew and former fisherman who has given up everything to become Christ’s disciple, believes Jesus to be the One for whom Israel has been waiting for millennia. He is the Savior; He is God’s Son; He is everything.
Like Peter, every generation must see Jesus with their own eyes and learn to follow Him in their own way, even though He is “the same yesterday and today and forever.” Though the Savior looks different to many—a father, a friend, a shepherd—He is still unchanging and so are His precepts. We must have an encounter with this ageless Jesus for our own time.
“Each successive epoch,” Albert Schweitzer said, “found its own thoughts in Jesus, which was indeed the only way it could make him live.”
First-century Christians in Israel wrestled with Jesus, the Jewish rabbi and Messiah. Second-century Roman Christians preached Jesus as the King of Kings who, unlike Caesar, was Lord of all. In the eighth and ninth centuries, Christians’ embrace of Jesus as the true image of God spawned new forms of art, architecture, and religious icons. In the Middle Ages, Christians wrestled with Jesus as the crucified God. During the Protestant Reformation, they discovered a Jesus who justifies humankind with sacrificial grace. Christians of the Enlightenment embraced Jesus, the God of reason, while Christians during the American civil rights movement recognized Jesus as the great liberator.
Each of these images is a crystallization of who Jesus is.
Throughout history, however, Christians have often let culture, rather than Christ, define their faith. This might certainly be true of the Crusaders’ Jesus, for example, who was a God of war and domination. Christians always face the temptation to depict Jesus in accordance with their own character and cast Him in an image that best suits their worldly goals.
The Christianity I often witnessed growing up seemed to be engaged in a political struggle for control of a nation in “moral decline.” The answer to “Who do you say Jesus is?” was pietistic and political. Jesus wanted us to take back our country for Him rather than leave everything behind and follow.
Raised in a conservative family with ties to many leaders in the so-called Religious Right, I thought faithful followship of Jesus meant defeating liberals. I assumed most people felt like my community did—that a cantankerous minority of secular humanists were attempting to chase Jesus out of God-blessed America. Our duty was to resist them.
As a young adult, I discovered that Christians on the left saw my community as revisionist historians who desired to transform America into an oppressive theocracy. Their Jesus didn’t care much for us, and ours didn’t like them either. Both sides had accepted a faith that seemed more shaped by American culture than by the Christ I kept encountering in the Bible.
Philosopher Jacques Ellul once said, “It seems as though politics is the Church’s worst problem. It is her constant temptation, the occasion of her greatest disasters, the trap continually set for her by the Prince of this World.” But Ellul is only partially right. Politics itself is not the problem. Foolish participation in politics is what gets the church into trouble. It divides a community for which God desires unity and forces us to lose site of the reason we live and move and breathe.
That’s why much of American Christianity—in the words of former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson—is in a moment of “head-snapping” change in which our wholesale participation in America’s culture wars is being reevaluated. Today’s believers are rediscovering Christianity and searching for a more Jesus-shaped faith. They aren’t leaving the public square altogether, but Christians of all ages—particularly the younger ones—are now rediscovering their faith and the One upon whom that faith is built. They are weary of the partisanship, the struggle for power. They want to go beyond the ballot box and do something concrete about our many problems.
Today’s Christians are returning to the Bible and glimpsing Jesus with fresh eyes and uncovering a faith that transcends the culture wars. They want a faith that isn’t just politically active, but one that transforms life. They believe we can call a truce in the culture wars while remaining faithful to Christ. In fact, they believe faithfulness requires such a cease-fire.
Every time I look at the crinkled paper that rests among the receipts in my wallet, Goethe’s fading words cry out. The old poet whispers to a new generation of Christians, beckoning them to embrace the faith that’s been handed down to them while making it their own.
Those in whose wake we now walk discerned how the faith should go forward in a time of cultural change and moral decline. A new generation must now decide how to go forward in our day. As I survey the Christian landscape, I see many who are staring down their Savior. They are answering the “who do you say” question as they follow Jesus beyond the culture wars.
This is their story.
And mine.
ONE
Breakfast with Falwell
It’s interesting that nowadays politicians want to talk about moral issues, and bishops want to talk politics.
—SIR HUMPHREY APPLEBY FROM YES, PRIME MINISTER
My restless legs shook under a table in the Lynchburg, Virginia, IHOP. I sat in a booth facing the entrance, my eyes fixed on the door. My stomach churned with nervous excitement and a splash of scared silly. Next to me, my dad sat quietly—calmer than I, but a bit anxious as well. We both knew the significance of this moment: I was about to meet Jerry Falwell for the first time.
Depending on one’s upbringing, that name may not conjure up the same emotions that it did in me in 1999 at the age of 17. For some, the name “Jerry Falwell” incites a roll of the eyes or anger. But I was raised to revere and respect Dr. Falwell, the veritable founder of the Religious Right. I saw him as a paragon of principle, a crusader for common Christians. These sentiments were reinforced throughout my life, since I had grown up in the inner sanctum of evangelicalism.
My father was a prominent Southern Baptist minister who expected us to be in church four times weekly, twice on Sundays. As his church size and influence grew, politicians extended invitations for fund-raising dinners and public events where our family would follow in tow—his smiling entourage of support.
Today, a picture hangs in Dad’s office of him with me, my brother, and President George H. W. Bush. It’s an emblem of the place I grew up. The Deep South. A world of fiery religion and frenzied politics. A world in which the two are often indistinguishable.
Within months of this meeting, Dad would be elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the largest Protestant denomination in America, which boasted 16 million members. Dr. Falwell knew the importance of such things, so he asked Dad to bring me up to his college—Liberty University—for a good old-fashioned sales pitch.
As the door swung open, my eyes widened. Power clung to his frame like his pressed oxford and three-button blazer. The preacher’s silver hair and genuine smile contributed to his jovial persona, but Jerry Falwell always meant business. He owned the room.
“This must be the future Liberty student,” he said snatching my hand and giving a firm squeeze. “James, we need to get this young man in Lynchburg.”
“I’m doing the best I can to convince him,” Dad responded.
Dr. Falwell sat down and motioned for our server. Without opening a menu, he rattled off his behest. The precision of his order told me this wasn’t his first visit to the International House of Pancakes, and the way he bantered about with the waitstaff indicated that it wouldn’t be his last.
Dad and I followed with our selections, and then the time arrived to address the reasons for our meeting. Dr. Falwell explained why Liberty was the university for me. He was building Liberty to become “the Notre Dame for evangelicals,” and it had everything a Christian could ask for—NCAA sports, conservative education, a student body where the girls outnumbered the boys. (Later on, I felt like he had exaggerated on the last point, but that’s a separate issue.)
“That’s why you need to be here next year, son. There’s no greater place on earth for training champions for Christ,” he said.
Dr. Falwell finished his sales pitch knowing he’d closed the deal. He’d given this talk a thousand times before. Then he turned to Dad, who, as a member of the Liberty board of trustees, asked about the school’s finances. Dr. Falwell remarked they were stable, but could be better.
“Enough about Liberty, Dr. Falwell,” Dad said. “How’s your ministry going?”
The reverend’s jovial smile went somber, and he leaned in closely.
“James, we’ve got the numbers. We’ve got the resources. We’ve got the leadership,” he said. “I’ve spoken to conservative Christians in churches all across this country, and they know what is at stake. We’ve got to get serious about Jesus, and we need to call this nation back to its roots. It’s time to stand for what is right.”
But then he added, “We’ve got to get our folks to the polls next year, and we need to do a better job telling people what will happen if liberal Democrats remain in control of the White House. We must save this nation!”
My brow furrowed. Even a 17-year-old realizes when someone’s answer doesn’t match the question. Dad asked Dr. Falwell about his ministry, and Falwell answered with a strategy for acquiring political power.
Jerry Falwell believed that our country was at a critical point in its history and that the responsibility to act rested on the Christian community. The stakes were high, and we couldn’t afford to lose. So strong were his feelings that he devoted a considerable amount of his time and ministry resources to leading the effort. With the resolve of Admiral Farragut—“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”—he was prepared to fight at all costs.
The preacher was not and is not alone in his approach to faith, politics, and culture. A conflict is raging, and the spoils are the rights to control and shape our nation and its policies. Unlike traditional military conflicts, this skirmish produces no physical casualties, but often results in the deaths of characters and reputations. Untrusting eyes stare across battle lines, with progressives crouched on one side and traditionalists on the other. Constituencies are mobilized, opinions are polarized, and divisions run deep.
Turn on the television and you’ll lay witness to raging war in stereo and Technicolor. One needs Tylenol to absorb the pounding pundits. Behar busts on O’Reilly, O’Reilly screams about Matthews, Matthews gripes about Hannity, Hannity fumes at Maddow, and Maddow can’t stop giving that same, tired stump speech about Limbaugh. It’s maddening.
They will occasionally stop to do an interview or two, but their guests are just as abrasive. Whether it’s a politician insulting an opponent or a “strategist” shouting talking points, the noise blurs together into one angry mess. Worst of all, nobody seems to be saying anything!
Turning the television off won’t solve the problem. Radio fills with the same nonsense, just louder. And if you mute the radio, you’re still assaulted by billboards, bumper stickers, and yard signs waving their collective hands and imploring you to choose a side.
Welcome to America’s culture war.
The term “culture war” originated in the 1960s, but James Davison Hunter popularized the term in his 1992 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. According to Hunter, the passionate fights to shape the nation’s stance and policy on contentious political issues are not disconnected, but part of a larger conflict rooted in our moral imaginations:
America is in the midst of a culture war that has had and will continue to have reverberations not only within public policy but within the lives of ordinary Americans everywhere. I define cultural conflict very simply as political and social hostility rooted in different systems of moral understanding. The end to which these hostilities tend is the domination of one cultural and moral ethos over all others.
In other words, Bill O’Reilly shouting about immigration and Al Franken whining about “lying liars” aren’t secluded opinions piercing America’s airwaves but the crossfire of two field officers from camps with radically different systems of moral thought. Abortion clinic protestors and anti-war demonstrators aren’t isolated pockets of resistance to individual issues, but rather the manifestations of conflicting cultural values.
Like a fish caught in a gill net, the Christian community has become enmeshed in this struggle. News shows feature pastors as pundits who offer opinions on everything from health care to tax reform, constitutional law to American history. Religious practitioners garner a seat at the table, and their massive followings cement them there.
As a senior in high school, I was unaware of the war going on around me—a war in which I was unwittingly entangled. This was the world in which I was raised, the only one I’d ever known. When I met Dr. Falwell in IHOP that day, I was in the presence of a five-star general of the culture wars. A staunch traditionalist and valiant conservative, he had served on the front lines for more than two decades when we met. Dr. Falwell and other Christian leaders like him were constructing a politico-religious machine long before I ordered the blueberry pancakes. And masses were following them into the fray.
During my formative years, others warned me that modernist liberals sought to obliterate all notions of God and destroy our precious way of life. Our family, our faith, our entire nation was locked in a struggle that Christians could not afford to lose. I responded by hunkering down in the cultural trenches. I consumed a steady diet of conservative writers like Ann Coulter and trained myself to combat the slander of godless liberals. I took my cues from vetted figures in the Religious Right, my trusted guides in the cultural conflict.
Such entrenchment was necessary if I hoped to honor our Lord by fighting off His political enemies. I never considered otherwise. After all, if one walked into a Southern evangelical church during the 1980s or ’90s, being greeted with both a handshake and a Christian Coalition voter’s guide wasn’t the slightest bit abnormal. In the conservative vortex where I spent my incubator years, fighting the culture wars was a Christian’s duty.
Is this what it means to follow Jesus in the twenty-first century? Is this what it looks like to pursue the kingdom-come life he spoke so often about? Memorize some talking points and vote into office the politicians who promise to favor us and our agendas?
I’m unconvinced. I’ve spent many hours of my adult life combing the New Testament Gospels to understand why Jesus seemed so much less engaged in politics than I was. The Israel known by Christ was as bitterly divided as America is today. The Jewish people were essentially slaves to the Roman government. The Romans determined their living conditions and extracted exorbitant taxes to build Roman-style cities that threatened the survival of Israel’s culture. The Jewish people in the first century were terrorized by a government that was more oppressive than Saddam Hussein’s, more uncooperative than Kim Jong Il’s, and as imperialistic as Adolf Hitler’s.
Just before Jesus’ birth, Roman armies rolled through Galilee, burning down villages and killing innocents. Any who resisted their rule were tortured and often executed to deter mass rebellion. Sometime around or after Jesus’ birth, the Roman general Varus gathered the rebels in and around Jesus’ hometown and crucified about 2,000 men. One might have argued that during the first century, Israel’s greatest need was political revolution.
When Jesus began His public ministry, the Jewish people were looking for a warrior, a conqueror, a new King David. If there was ever a time when a “war on terror” was needed, it was Jesus’ lifetime. But Jesus showed little interest in sanctifying the state. In fact, He rarely acknowledged the Roman government under which He lived. Even when Satan offered to give Him authority over “all the kingdoms of the world,” Jesus said, “no thanks.” He had something else in mind.
In researching the way the Romans treated the Jews around the time of Jesus’ birth, I found myself wishing Jesus had intervened. After chasing out the temple money changers, couldn’t He have chased out the Roman oppressors? Jesus was God, after all. But He refuses to fit the mold I want to make for Him.
At first reading of the Gospels, Jesus seems almost unconcerned with political engagement. Sure, His teachings had profound political implications, but He wasn’t interested in organizing a constituency to fight political battles.
I could not at first understand why He refused to mobilize His followers to take up the sword and return Israel to her glory. Instead of fighting against the Romans, He fought for the Jews. Rather than shedding blood, He promoted peace. Instead of inflicting pain on the oppressor, He offered healing to the oppressed. Rather than marginalizing those who opposed Him, He accepted those who were marginalized. Jesus could have spent His time schmoozing with the political elite, but instead He chose to dwell among the poor.
Rather than giving political speeches, Jesus talked obsessively about this idea called “kingdom.” He spoke about it more than anything else, and it was the central element of His good news. He pursued, preached, and embodied this message. “The time has come,” Jesus often said. “The kingdom of God is at hand.” According to the New Testament, Jesus ushered in the kingdom of God, bringing the good news with Him to earth and spreading its seeds through His work among us. Those who follow Him are supposed to desire it, live it, and partner with God to continue promoting it in Jesus’ physical absence.
But what is the kingdom of God? What does it look like and how does one pursue it? How we answer has huge implications for how we engage faith, culture, and politics.
Like a physical kingdom, God’s kingdom is the time and place in which He reigns over all things. God’s attributes saturate every cubic inch of his kingdom. Peace reigns in God’s kingdom because God is peace. Love is supreme in God’s kingdom because God is love. Mercy is palpable in God’s kingdom because God is the ultimate mercy giver. Righteousness is endless in God’s kingdom because the King’s holiness has spilled out onto everything. For this reason, Jesus’ most comprehensive description of what kingdom citizens look like includes peacemakers, the meek, and those who crave righteousness like their next meal.
The Bible asserts that the seeds of this kingdom were already planted by the Great Sower, Jesus. Christ’s death on the cross is bringing everything under His supremacy. Though the kingdom will not fully blossom until He returns to reign, humans can experience it right now. For this reason, Jesus taught that the kingdom is both a coming reality and already here.
If the kingdom of God is the end game, the end goal, the prize Christians must pursue, we must only look at our pursuits to distill out our definition of the kingdom. Culture warriors take the Bible’s vast teachings on God’s kingdom and shrink ray it to fit their specific purposes. When Christians devote their lives exclusively to the construction of an earthly power, when their mission sounds like a campaign strategy, it’s clear that they believe God’s kingdom can be reached by political victories.
Many on the Christian left speak as if the kingdom of God entails implementing a “social justice” agenda in Washington, getting our troops off the battlefield, and obliterating the reign of the Christian Right. For those on the right, the kingdom amounts to voting Christians into office, making abortion and gay marriage illegal, reinstating prayer in public schools, and posting the Ten Commandments in courthouses. When either of these agendas becomes the ultimate measure of faithfulness, the kingdom of God is supplanted by our political strategies.
Russell Moore, dean of theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said, “The failure of evangelical politics is often, at root, the failure of an evangelical theology of the Kingdom.” Christians must investigate what pursuing God’s kingdom means before they embark on political engagement.
Linking God’s kingdom with puny political platforms robs it of the majesty, holiness, vastness, and stunning beauty that more accurately demonstrate who God is. The result of a political ideology divorced from a political theology is a public engagement that often oversteps, overreaches, and underwhelms skeptical non-believers. Perhaps that explains why so few choose to submit to the King in their hearts and lives today. If followers of Jesus misunderstand the kingdom, they misunderstand their mission.
Understanding what Jesus taught about the kingdom forces us to challenge our assumptions about how Christians engage the public square. The kingdom informs believers how high a premium they should place on personal political agendas. It shows them what faith looks like in our current age.
Before I left Lynchburg, I shook the preacher’s hand, but I was unable to shake his comments. As our car rumbled back from the James River Valley to metropolitan Atlanta, I thought long and hard about what Dr. Falwell had said. Impressed by his presence and passion, I shared many of the same sentiments.
Dr. Falwell said we needed to get serious about Jesus. I wanted to get serious about Jesus. He said we needed to call our nation back to its roots. I wanted our nation to return to its roots. Dr. Falwell said it was time to stand for what is right. I wanted to stand for what was right.
But even then, my teenage mind wasn’t sure that he had effectively navigated how faith should mingle with politics.
Less than one year after my breakfast with Jerry Falwell, I returned to Lynchburg as a freshman at Liberty University. Homesick and formative, I dipped my toe into the waters of the evangelical super-school. Three times each week I attended a mandatory convocation (code word for “chapel”) where students listened to a sampling of America’s best evangelical preachers—interrupted on occasion by conservative spokespersons like former congressman J. C. Watts and Sean Hannity, who would “preach” slightly different sermons.
Continues...
Excerpted from A Faith of Our Own by Merritt, Jonathan Copyright © 2012 by Merritt, Jonathan. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
Foreword Kirsten Powers xv
0 Read This First 1
1 Breakfast with Falwell 8
2 Journey to Montreat 23
3 Christians at War 46
4 Our Constant Temptation 63
5 A Symphony of Voices 87
6 Faith at the Seams 99
7 Give Me the Songs of a Nation 120
8 A Touch Closer 136
9 One Hundred Pianos 155
10 The Burden of Every Generation 170
Acknowledgments 179
About the Author 183
Notes 185
Selected Bibliography 199