The Cost of Ecclesial Cowardice II

When Churches Lie Down Too Long

Why do most churches only come out to fight on issues which have already received the stamp of approval from secular progressive society?

I’ve been speaking recently about the importance of dying on hills. Or, not dying on The Hill That Disapproves of Dying on Hills. In particular, the essence of that old Patristic maxim: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” This is sound advice, but often unsoundly applied.

The Folly of Feeding Wolves

Let’s imagine one such “hill” which some poor fool might wish to die on today. We could talk about “gay conversion therapy”, for example. This is a hot topic with sustained media focus in recent years as governmental pronouncements to legislate against changing one’s sexual orientation ramp up in ways that ought to make many Christians uncomfortable.

Is defending the right to convert gay people to heterosexuality a “primary” issue? Is it one of those “essentials” or is it something over which there is “liberty”? If those who oppose our opposition call us “uncharitable” for insisting upon it, wouldn’t that break that neat Patristic maxim we love to cite?

After all, it’s not something you’d imagine the Church particularly “needs” to defend to the death, is it? There are lots of terrible versions of gay conversion therapy that have nothing to do with Christian beliefs, aren’t there? Shouldn’t the Church be distancing itself from such things more often than not? Why make a fuss about it, if doing so will only cause more problems? Hasn’t the Church had issues of homophobia in the past as it is? Is it really worth losing more “credit” in the eyes of the world over such an insignificant side-issue? And what about that gay friend of yours? Wouldn’t all this actually harm your ability to preach the Gospel to them?

“Best not to wade in, then,” we think; “best keep the wolves happy for now. Maybe then they’ll leave us alone for a while. And who knows, they might even come round to see things from our perspective eventually...” This, of course, is utter folly. But I expect it’s what ends up being thought a good deal of the time.

Needless to say, you cannot do business with wolves. They’ll always come back for more. They require a strong hand against them, not a pat on the back. Perhaps the fact that we killed off all the literal wolves in Britain several centuries ago has dullened our senses to such dangers. But the metaphorical wolves remain - only they’re actually rather real.

Ready Or Not…

How will churches respond if and when government legislators decide that pastoral care for Christians tempted by same-sex attraction is actually an insidious get-out clause for homophobic practice? What if pastors are demonised for preaching sermons on offensive Biblical texts? How will we react when Christians cannot pray for brothers or sisters about same-sex attraction without breaking the law?

And what if churches are threatened with losing their charitable status when deemed “uncharitable” in the eyes of LGBT+ lobby groups? What if, as one recent survey of 18-34-year-olds found, it is decided that the Bible contains “hate speech”? How many churches are truly ready to face such challenges head-on?

How many churches will cave, but in a way that doesn’t seem like they’re caving? My suspicion is that by the time such challenges do eventually land at the front doors of many of our churches, we’ll be tempted to justify our cowardice by calling for yet more “nuance”. As we do so, we might find ourselves thanking God that we’re not like those polemical “issue-driven” churches who like to die on hills.

Dying on “Gospel” Hills?

Many churches in recent decades have been characterised by their stance of only dying on “Gospel” hills. That is, to only go to war over major doctrinal issues that substantially impact the understanding or proclamation of the Gospel.

So, we say, we’ll only die on “Trinitarian” hills, or “Christological” hills, or “Resurrection” hills. i.e. the hills which aren’t really hills at all because, conveniently, the prevailing public pressure affecting the Church neither knows nor cares about them. We keep our armaments ready and waiting for any moment someone says something bad about the Trinity (which they probably won’t) and we decry those Christians who seem to go to war over issues like feminism which we think are a waste of time (which they probably aren’t).

More often than not, those secondary issues are actually where the real battle is. It’s not only a battle “out there”, it’s a battle within the walls of the Church itself. Issues of sex and gender, for example, connect to numerous other issues, directly impinging upon how we think about created nature, holiness, Biblical authority, human freedom, human flourishing, religious freedom, family, social order, church leadership, and more.

The reason we often stay quiet is because, technically, the presenting issue itself does not appear to be a “primary” issue worth fighting for/against. And so we let it go. And then another one. And then another one. There comes a point where you have to ask: just what will it take for the Church to come out and fight for what it believes to be good, true, and beautiful? How much of God’s Word needs to be eroded before we stand up and say “No more”?

Dying on the World’s Hills

“But,” you may say, “the Church does fight for many issues!” Perhaps. Yet notice something: they do so (usually) only when society has already approved such issues. And so we fight for the alleviation of poverty, the plight of asylum-seekers, the importance of multiculturalism, the evils of systemic racism, the terrors of misogyny, etc. These are not unimportant fights. But they are “Kosher” fights which churches only feel comfortable “addressing” because, magically, they also happen to be the things progressive society is already addressing. That is, they are not really “fights” at all. They have already received the secular stamp of approval.

Have you not wondered how convenient it is that the Church’s “prophetic” discernment so often aligns so perfectly with what is already happening, and with what costs us so little to say, in a culture that is moving ever further away from Christian norms? Does this not make you just a little bit curious? When was the last time you heard of a church being persecuted for doing a food bank? When did you hear of a street preacher being arrested for telling everyone that God loves everyone?

It hardly needs saying now, but just look again at the way critical race theory suddenly became a kind of “Gospel truth” in/around 2020. I remember being genuinely astounded at the sheer volume of sermons which essentially preached in/from/to the George Floyd situation. What made this so remarkable was not necessarily that such socio-political issues were spoken about per se, but that they were spoken about from pulpits where socio-political issues were usually largely absent. These were “Gospel-only” pulpits, usually unconcerned (on principle) with the changing currents of socio-political hot topics.

Why did so many churches choose to speak up on that “issue” at that time, having taken such care to avoid other issues like homosexuality, abortion, transgender, or feminism? You can hazard a guess that it had more than a little to do with reputational safeguarding. Some of these things are so embedded in modern churches that to question them invokes the worst caricatures of their opposites.

Even those who do occasionally speak about such things are usually very reluctant to do so in any specific way. Conservative evangelicals have their “kosher” issues too. They will happily denounce gay marriage with one hand and think they’re standing up to the culture, whilst with the other hand they continue to welcome feminism as though it’s always been with us, and as though feminism had nothing whatsoever to do with issues like homosexuality or transgenderism.

Standing (or Lying) on Hills

Our watchfulness over our reputations means we’re often content to lie down before the agendas of the world. We act like an enslaved people, shadow-boxing and posturing with the world in order to avoid the real battles we’re called to fight, which only proves how we’ve actually been won by the world.

That famous quote often attributed to Luther is one which all modern church leaders ought to know by heart:

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.

Luther knew that “big fights” often come in “little fight” clothing. We’re always tempted to tell ourselves that we’re being faithful when in fact we’re subtly shirking the fight.

It is common nowadays to hear castigations of Luther-types or Luther-moments. In the social media age we’re often confronted with the self-righteous indignation of scores of people apparently willing to die on strange hills in loud ways. Often, such people may have little justification for their respective hills. They may also seem to carry too little character or wisdom to match their zeal. Yet even where our suspicions of vain pretenders and grifters may be accurate, we must also remain suspicious of ourselves.

Why do we always jump to suspicion over those who challenge the way we’ve always seen and said things? Why is our first thought to demonise the prophetic voice? Thus it ever was. The prophets know the bites that come from those among them. As Jesus Himself said: “A prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.” (Mark 6:4). How many churches must there be today who stand against the very voices God has given them (cf. Eph. 4) in order to help them stand against the world?

We’ve grown accustomed to dampening the voices of courage in our day. We tend to call for “wisdom” (read: caution) at just the time we ought to be calling for “zeal” (read: action). We separate the two, failing to see that to be wise about the right things necessitates action, and to be cautious about the right things necessitates zeal.

When it comes to dying on hills, where churches once gloried in Luther’s famous maxim: “Here I stand, for I can do no other”, many churches today have become more comfortable with “Here we lie.” For they can do no other.