Issues Facing Missions Today 31: Post-Christian Culture and Changes in the Workplace

Issues Facing Missions Today 31: Post-Christian Culture and Changes in the Workplace

In this post, I would like to compare the challenges facing Christians in the workplace around AD 200 and today.  Both contexts involve Christians living as a minority group within a larger society.  The former period is represented in the writings of Tertullian, who advised Christians how to live in a pre-Christian society.  Does Tertullian give us some food for thought as we increasingly realize in the West that we live in a post-Christian society?

The Christian author, Tertullian, addressed the issue of how the minority Christian group should maintain its convictions in the pagan workplace.  He wrote in an era of idolatry and persecution.  In On Idolatry, Tertullian discussed certain types of work that he believed Christians could not do because they involved a compromise of their faith.  While some occupations were acceptable to Christians, others were clearly not.

Obviously, Christians were not to participate in idolatry.  Yet certain areas of work not directly a matter of idolatry would nevertheless involve supporting idolatry.  Christians were not to make idols, and any new believer insisting he or she had no other means by which to live was to be dismissed from Christian community for being complicit with idolaters (ch. 5).  Tertullian lists other examples of work that Christians should not do.  The builder should not construct an idol’s house.  Painters, marble masons, bronze workers, engravers, carvers, and gilders all had jobs that potentially involved complicity with idolatry (ch. 8).  Imagine a builder building a house and being asked to construct an area in the house for the household god, let alone being asked to build a public shrine to a god or goddess.  Another example of a ‘minister of idolatry’ for Tertullian was a person handing wine to another sacrificing to some god (ch. 17).  Persons can, he argued, engage in work that could in theory expose someone to idolatry if in fact they take care to avoid this.  One might, for example, avoid procuring animals for idol sacrifices or avoid assigning persons to clean temples or oversee tributes given at the temples.  And a person might avoid putting on entertainment related to idolatry.

Tertullian also examined whether a Christian might have anything to do with the military.  While a soldier might be involved in idolatry through oaths and sacrifices--and therefore Christians should have no part in this--he also ruled out any Christian’s involvement in the military because it involved killing (ch. 19).  In another work, On the Crown, Tertullian stated that Christians could not be soldiers because the Lord proclaims that all who use the sword will perish by the sword (ch. 11).  This was not the belief of Tertullian alone in the first three centuries—before the Emperor Constantine encouraged Christian participation in the military.  In fact, the early Church was decidedly pacifist (see George Kalantzis, Caesar and the Lamb: Early Christian Attitudes on War and Military Service  Once the Church was accepted and approved, even becoming a majority force within the government’s activities, concerns such as Tertullian’s faded.  Thus began the long era known as Christendom in Europe and the Americas.  Another area where Tertullian found Christians facing a compromise of their faith was in taking loans.  Christians, Tertullian stated, should not borrow money from non-Christians because pledges were made in the name of the pagan gods (On Idolatry, ch. 23).

During the period of Christendom, when the West imagined (it regularly failed) that it lived by Christian rules of justice, Christians took on some activities that no Christian of the first three centuries would have considered options for believers, such as military service.  In the present period of post-Christianity, believers and unbelievers are having to work out new lines and ways of disagreement.  The rules are presently focused on Christian ethics more than Christian faith.  Christians are not being forced to deny Christ and sacrifice a chicken to the Emperor!  But they are finding direct challenges to their moral convictions, including challenges from state and federal governments.

All this is happening at a time when the primary moral virtue championed by the Enlightenment, freedom, is subtly being replaced with a postmodern ethic of tolerance and non-discrimination.  The progression is logical, but also antithetical.  One might, for example, argue that protecting a person’s freedom goes hand in hand with being a tolerant society that discriminates against no one.  That logic existed up until the recent past because of the Enlightenment.  In a postmodern context, however, an ethic of tolerance trumps personal freedom.

So, for example, a ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Act’ became federal law in the United States in 1993.  The law restricts laws that ‘substantially burden’ a person’s freedom to act according to his or her religion.  Because the Supreme Court confined the limits of this act to laws that the federal government made, not states, a number of states have passed their own ‘RFRA’ laws.  This week, the state of Indiana became one of a number of states to pass such a law.  The law in Indiana intends to extend the federal law to the state's law (although some have tried to argue that it is different--I do not believe that it is).  The federal law in 1993 was virtually unanimously approved by all parties, but the present Indiana law has been vigorously opposed.  The reason for this opposition is that the Indiana law has been seen as a way in which persons or businesses might refuse services to homosexuals.  So, people might argue, because I do not want to, in Tertullian's words, put on entertainment for a celebration I disapprove of because of my religious convictions, I should not be compelled to do so.

The development from 1993 to 2015 seems to be that freedom has, for many, been replaced by not only tolerance but an activist interpretation of what tolerance entails: persons must tolerate others (actually, certain others).  In such a world, Tertullian’s Christian builder would be required to build pagan temples, or the Christian metal worker or wood worker would be required to fashion idols if customers requested them to do so.  American society is presently asking whether the government should enforce a certain practice of ‘tolerance’ by compelling the baker to bake cakes, the photographer to take pictures, or the florist to prepare flowers for homosexual weddings.  [Update in 2022: the Supreme Court continues to insist that Christians may not be compelled to do such things.  Freedom of speech is antithetical to compelled speech, and the separation of Church and State protects religious freedom.  Lawsuits continue against Christians, not only in the US but also in England and Europe.]

The governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, asks in response to opponents of his state’s new law, ‘Is tolerance a two-way street or not?’  Another way to ask this question is whether individuals have freedom, particularly religious freedom, or whether society can compel persons to act against their convictions in order to ensure a particular practice of tolerance.  In antiquity, Christians were periodically required on pain of death to sacrifice to the emperor.  Many Christians were martyred. Christians also found themselves, as Tertullian explains, having to disengage from various types of jobs because of their Christian convictions.  The similarity today is that Christians are once again having to determine which jobs are not open to them in the wider society and are once again being persecuted for refusing to perform certain acts required by the government to which they are opposed because of their faith.  The difference is that pagan society was protecting its religious tradition against Christians, whereas today religion itself, of any sort and particularly Christian, is viewed as the enemy of the so-called tolerant society.

Another issue arises in the present debate in American society.  The understanding of religion is largely that it is a matter of private belief--like a philosophy--without implications for practice and activities.  The privitization of religion was largely what made the deistic version of American religion work in the public square: people could hold whatever thoughts they wished--even speak about them publicly (freedom of speech), but all that was just a private matter of belief.  This is not, of course, religion--not of any sort.  What Christians are being expected to do in the present climate is to keep their beliefs to themselves while engaging in all the activities of society at large.  However, beliefs are not convictions if they do not make a difference in one's actions and practices.

Just how Christians are to proceed in this climate is complicated.  Yet one thing is clear: compromising our faith is not an option, even if society will not protect our freedom to live according to our convictions and will insist that we perform certain acts against these convictions.  The challenge that we ourselves increasingly face is to begin to sort out what professions are no longer open to believers.  We have lived a cozy life with the larger society and governments for centuries.  In some cases, exceptions to our faith were allowed, even encouraged.  The pressure to make compromises is increasing quickly in a post-Christian society.  Now, the difference between the Christian life and the larger society is increasingly more obvious.  This will—it already has—led to rethinking what it means to be a Christian in such society.

Instead of asking in such a climate, ‘Would it not be better if the President were a Christian?’ we might now find ourselves asking if a president, a commander in chief, can ever be a Christian.  We might begin to discover that views of justice and morality sympathetic to the Christian faith will never receive majority approval in a democracy.  We might ask whether the mission of the minority Christian community is to take the Gospel rather than guns to the world.  We might need to ask whether our jobs are directly or indirectly supporting an agenda that actually opposes the commandments of God.  Can Christian colleges continue to take federal loans and have government work-study programmes if the government forces the colleges to act against their Christian values?  Should Christian counselors mute sharing their Christian convictions in the counseling context lest they be perceived to be abusing the authority they have as counselors?  Can faithful Christian pediatricians join pediatric practices that include doctors who perform abortions?  More and more, Christians are having to realize that their faith limits their options in business in a post-Christian world, and perhaps they will begin to see that what they had deemed acceptable in a pseudo-Christian world really never was an option for Christians in the first place.

Christians may find themselves disagreeing over some of the conclusions reached on these issues.  I, for one, tend to side with Tertullian.  Jesus prayed, 'I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.  I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one' (John 17:14-15).  Christians do need to ask how to live according to this prayer, to live in the world but not of the world.  This is particularly important in a climate where even the ethic of freedom championed in the Enlightenment—an ethic that brought some protection—is now undermined by a pro-active ethic of ‘tolerance’ that, ironically, excludes Christian convictions and practices while particular, non-Christian social agendas are advanced.




1. The case stipulating this was City of Boerne vs. Flores in 1997.
2.  Indiana General Assembly Senate Bill 568.  Online (accessed 30 May, 2015): https://iga.in.gov/legislative/2015/bills/senate/568

Issues Facing Missions Today 30: A City on a Hill; But Jack Fell Down and Broke His Crown

Issues Facing Missions Today 30: A City on a Hill; But Jack Fell Down and Broke His Crown 

Three news items regarding the Church and its mission this month stood out as examples of churches giving up their position of being a city on a hill for the nations.  Each is a Jack or Jill tumbling down the hill, leaving behind the water of life above in order to have fellowship with the world below, giving up its witness.  The path taken by three churches caving to cultural pressures does not seem to be a lonely one, however.  I will simply report the stories to the extent that I know about them and then juxtapose an alternative, Biblical vision for the witness of God’s people to the world.

The first story comes out of San Francisco, a city that shares some of the notoriety that was once the dishonor of ancient Corinth.  As we might imagine John would have written to the church (cf. Rev. 2-3), ‘To the angel of the Church of San Francisco, write, “Stand fast in the city of sexual permissiveness.  I know that some of you have yielded to her sins.  Repent, I say.  But to everyone who stands fast and does not falter, I will give permission to eat of the tree of life.’

It is, then, no wonder that we hear a sad story about a church in San Francisco this past week, a church caving in to the culture, choosing to remove the stumbling block of righteousness that it might have fellowship with the world.  The Religion News Service announced on 16 March that a ‘Prominent San Francisco evangelical church drops celibacy requirement for LGBT members.’[1]  Fred Harrell, Sr, the senior pastor of City Church (of the Reformed Church in America) stated the church’s new position in a letter: ‘We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining’ (March 13).  Apparently, walking in the ways of the Lord is an example of discrimination.  Harrell further explained that the church’s new ethic was adopted for communal (not Biblical) reasons.  He wrote,

‘Imagine feeling this from your family or religious community.  If you stay, you must accept celibacy with no hope that you too might one day enjoy the fullness of intellectual, spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical companionship.  If you pursue a lifelong partnership, you are rejected. This is simply not working and people are being hurt.  We must listen and respond.’

The article points out that City Church has followed the logic of two other ‘Evangelical’ churches in removing the requirement of celibacy for homosexual members—Grace Pointe Church in Nashville, Tennessee and East Lake Community Church in Seattle, Washington. One might also mention the same decision at World Vision last year, although the organization reversed its decision a short time later.  The Religion News Service article closes with a quote from Laura Turner, City Church’s communication’s coordinator: ‘Telling LGBT people they have to change before they can become Christians is leading to depression, suicide and addiction and we won’t do that anymore.’  We have here two alleged reasons for these decisions: exclusion undermines community, and calling sinners sinful can lead to suicide.

Whatever one wishes to say about these arguments (and they do beg for a response!), what is missing in the discussion, at least as it is here presented, is any reference to Scripture.  Therein lies the great mistake in designating these churches ‘Evangelical’ at all.  Of course, a leopard might imagine itself a lion, but it is still a leopard.  An essential part of any definition of ‘Evangelical’ is that theology and ethics are Biblical first and foremost.  Careful scrutiny of the Scriptures, and then setting them aside for more compelling concerns about community and psychology does not qualify as Evangelical—that is, in fact, an exit from the Evangelical movement.  Not a few bizarre, even heretical teachings can be found in the Evangelical movement (e.g., the Prosperity ‘Gospel’), but what binds the lot together is that all believe that they are following Scripture.  There are disagreements among Evangelicals over doctrine and, to a much lesser degree, over ethics, but all make their arguments from the Scriptures.  There have been attempts by all sorts to explain away the Biblical passages addressing homosexuality, but the arguments flare up for a minute and burn out just as quickly, only to be replaced by other vain attempts to mute the Scriptures and the convictions of the Church for over two thousand years.  Undoubtedly, some Evangelicals will be confused by all this—even convinced by it for a time—but they will have to reckon soon enough with mistaken exegesis if the Bible is truly their authority.  With City Church, however, we have a setting aside of Biblical authority in order to cater to the pressures from a post-Christian culture.

A second story in the news this past week also had to do with homosexuality.  A majority of presbyteries in the Presbyterian Church, USA—a denomination of just under 2 million in the United States—voted to excise words from the Book of Common Order that had previously defined marriage as only between a man and a woman.[2]  The Book of Common Order will now permit homosexual ‘marriage’ with the following, open-ended wording:

Marriage is a gift God has given to all humankind for the wellbeing of the entire human family.  Marriage involves a unique commitment between two people, traditionally a man and a woman, to love and support each other for the rest of their lives.  The sacrificial love that unites the couple sustains them as faithful and responsible members of the church and the wider community.

In civil law, marriage is a contract that recognizes the rights and obligations of the married couple in society.  In the Reformed tradition, marriage is also a covenant in which God has an active part, and which the community of faith publicly witnesses and acknowledges.

This is different from the City Church story because the denomination has been on the decline for decades as Evangelicals and others leave.  Finally enough people upholding Biblical truth have departed the denomination that those remaining can change theology and ethics from the historic teachings of the Church.  Like City Church, there is no mention of Scripture.  Whereas City Church is trying to attract people from the culture by setting aside Biblical standards, the PCUSA is already the culture. It is a chameleon of culture, a kind of religious expression of the liberal American culture.  In doing this, the PCUSA is, of course, not alone.  Nor is America alone among Western countries with this cultural pressure.  The PCUSA now officially joins the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (‘Evangelical’ being a word for Lutherans, not having anything to do with what everybody else means by the word!), and the Episcopal Church—all declining denominations that have adopted the culture’s values and jettisoned Biblical authority.  They are proud owners of the ruins of what once was a city shining on a hill.

A third story this month came on 6th March, when the vicar of St. John’s, Waterloo in Southwark had the grand idea to hold a joint service with Muslims.  According to the story reported by Madeleine Davies for Church Times, the vicar, Canon Giles Goddard, concluded the service with an attempt to identify the God of Christians with Allah.  He said, ‘Allah, God, is always with us and always around us, and is within us….  So let us celebrate our shared traditions by giving thanks to the God that we love, Allah, Amen.'  The Bishop of Southwark, the Rt Revd Christopher Chessun, quickly investigated and corrected the breach of polity, and Canon Goddard was led to apologize for allowing Muslim prayers in a consecrated church.[3]  One wonders if anyone thought the theology might be in error as well.

Each of these headline stories this month represents the increasing pressure of culture on the Church in the West to conform to its values.  Yet the Biblical vision for God’s people is not conformity to but witness to the world.  Isaiah, the 8th century prophet of Israel, spoke oracles against the sinful nations and against sinful Israel for her conformity to the sinful nations.  His vision for what God expected of his people was of a city on a hill to which the nations streamed to learn the ways of God.  He says,

Isaiah 2:2-3 In days to come the mountain of the LORD's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it.  3 Many peoples shall come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Ethics is mission.  If we dilute God’s righteous requirements to attract those who will have nothing of them, we may have community—even large churches—but we will not only have turned off the lights on the hill and silenced God’s revelation of himself through us to the world. We will also have tumbled down the hill to become one with the world. 

Let Evangelicals—all orthodox Christians—rather say with Isaiah, ‘Come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!’ (Isaiah 2.5).  Only then, as Jesus says, will we, his disciples, be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and a city on a hill that cannot be hid (Mt. 5.13-14).




[1] See article by this title by Kimberly Winston.  Accessed online (20 March, 2015): http://www.religionnews.com/2015/03/16/san-francisco-evangelicals-drop-celibacy-requirement-lgbt-members/.
[2] See Melody Smith, ‘Presbyterian Church (USA) approves marriage amendment,’ March 17, 2015.  Accessed online (20 March, 2015): https://www.pcusa.org/news/2015/3/17/presbyterian-church-us-approves-marriage-amendment/.
[3] Madeleine Davies, ‘Canon Goddard apologises for Muslim prayers in his church,’ in Church Times, 18 March 2015.  Accessed online (20 March, 2015): http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2015/20-march/news/uk/canon-goddard-apologises-for-muslim-prayers-in-his-church

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