Andrew Allis

Granville

“We don’t get into politics or controversy here at the First Church of (fill in the blank), rather we just lift up Jesus in this congregation and everything else takes care of itself.”

The above quote reflects the attitude of most churches in America that would self-identify as “evangelical.” This “head firmly planted deep in the sand” philosophy, aided by Lutheran pietism which had taken root in Germany centuries before in the late 17th century, is what allowed Hitler to take power in Germany in the 1930’s, essentially unopposed by the German Lutheran churches and their leadership (Dietrich Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a mere handful of other courageous pastors being the exception in resisting Nazism).

The pietistic movement, which at least started out with good intentions, to revitalize the dead orthodoxy that had gripped the Church, devolved into only being concerned with the interior spiritual life of growth in Christ and only with what was happening within the Church walls, largely unconcerned with the happenings in the rest of the world including, and especially, in the “dirty realm of politics.” Hitler loved, and exploited, that prevailing errant theology and ecclesiology because it gave him free reign to do whatever he wanted. He told the German pastors, “You confine yourself to the church; I’ll take care of the German people,” and . . . “you pastors should worry about getting people to heaven, and leave this world to me.” Most pastors happily agreed, finding Hitler’s reasoning in keeping with generations of their pietistic tradition.

So much was this the case, that Lutherans recounted after the war ended, to their shame, how they would sing their hymns all the louder to drown out the sound of the cattle boxcars nosily passing by on the railroad, which ran by their Church, knowing they were carrying Jews to the death-camps, thus they wouldn’t have to listen to them and could blithely continue on, peacefully undisturbed with their “worship” service.

Being salt and light and speaking God’s Word prophetically to the larger culture is not just a worthy consideration for the Church to ponder, it is inherent in what the Church is in its very nature as defined by Christ Himself, and expressed by the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, influential neo-Calvinist theologian, and journalist, Abraham Kuyper, when he stated, “To be sure, there is not one square inch in all the universe about which Christ does not cry out, ‘This is mine!'”

Thus, the Church fails, as it did in Nazi Germany, when it remains quiet for the sake of supposed respectability and a false peace with the present secularized culture about staggering societal evils. Here are just two: the present holocaust of unborn babies being legally murdered, literally torn limb from limb, in the womb, over 62 million and counting since Roe v. Wade in 1973, as well as Marxist Socialist (government as god) politicians and unelected bureaucrats trampling all over our constitutional rights of not only freedom to worship and peaceably assemble, but the free exercise thereof, the expression of those religious beliefs outside the walls of the Church in the larger society.

No, we’re not talking about turning the Church into a Political Action Committee, this is about the Church finding its voice, and growing a spine, to speak prophetically to the Culture on issues of a moral nature that are directly addressed in Scripture. Let’s learn the lesson from even recent history, so we don’t repeat its mistakes (and sins) at this crucial time of decision for a nation at the crossroads. Choose now your course Evangelical Church in America. It couldn’t be more clearly laid out for you, cowardly silence and complicity or standing up for what you say you believe and are convinced of from Scripture.