Monday, July 14, 2008
Church and Society
Aaron Menikoff summarized his doctoral research to date at CGO
Which leads inexorably to the second point. Discipleship is not just about making better Christians - it is about making a better society. The Prohibition example is again useful. Had we been a nation of disciples, Prohibition would not only have been successful, it would have been unnecessary!
How often we forget how God created us - as creatures of free will. He created us to be able to chose Him, which also means He has left us free to reject Him. When we, even through majoratarian political means, force our religious morality on the nation at large, we remove from the non-believer the precise freedom with which God created us - we become the sin, once again, by denying God's created order.
But there is a beauty in all this. God's societal commands lead to a better society. Drunkenness disorders society, and hence public drunkenness remains against the law, even to this day. Our job in such circumstance is to discover the underlying reason for God's commands. Armed with such knowledge we can then present to a society where non-belief is significant those reasons, and we will thus preserve our free society, and thus be free to carry on with our evangelism.
How do we discover God's underlying reasons for His commands? We become better disciples ourselves. As we come closer to being like Christ, we become better able to see His perspective.
Do you want to change the world? Become a deeply discipled politician - or disciple one.
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My overarching conclusion is that Baptists were in fact social reformers. They cared about society and wanted to see society change for the better. This was not postmillennial eschatology working itself out or perfectionist theology finding a home in social ministry nor was it a sanctified version of social control. Baptists believed that following Christ required they work toward a holy nation.Just a couple of comments on this. Firstly, the temperance movement, as pinnacled in Prohibition, was one of the greatest social disasters of our history. All it did in the end is produce crime, and in many cases, exceedingly violent crime. The period is testament to the fact that religious ideology forced on a society not convinced on the validity of the religious claims is simple oppression - and the oppressed fight back! A "victory" won for religion on the basis of government fiat is no victory at all.
A secondary conclusion addresses how these believers sought to reform society. They aimed at this two ways: through indirect and direct means. The indirect means were primary. They believed that when the gospel took root in the believer’s life that individual would become a virtuous citizen. Virtuous citizens were good for the nation. Thus the best way to reform the nation was to share the gospel. Be changed by the gospel. Baptists and other evangelicals of the nineteenth century were very clear on this point. They did not limit social reform to discrete acts of benevolence. Personal piety was social reform because without the increase of the gospel society was surely lost. Direct social reform existed as well. In the early nineteenth century, when a church in Savannah, Georgia, saw that individuals in the street were dying of hunger, it formed a welfare committee to help the poor. The city had no welfare services, people were in need, and the church act immediately, directly. It did more than preach—it served. Direct avenues of social reform were not foreign to nineteenth-century Baptists and other Christians.
A final conclusion is the observation that Christians disagreed over the extent of direct involvement Christians and churches should have in social ministries. The temperance movement of the early to mid-nineteenth century is a great example. Some Christians thought churches should be temperance societies—for the sake of the well-being of society, for society’s reformation. Others thought that churches should stay away from the temperance movement and stick to preaching the gospel. All agreed Christians should benefit society indirectly. They disagreed over the propriety of direct social reform.
Which leads inexorably to the second point. Discipleship is not just about making better Christians - it is about making a better society. The Prohibition example is again useful. Had we been a nation of disciples, Prohibition would not only have been successful, it would have been unnecessary!
How often we forget how God created us - as creatures of free will. He created us to be able to chose Him, which also means He has left us free to reject Him. When we, even through majoratarian political means, force our religious morality on the nation at large, we remove from the non-believer the precise freedom with which God created us - we become the sin, once again, by denying God's created order.
But there is a beauty in all this. God's societal commands lead to a better society. Drunkenness disorders society, and hence public drunkenness remains against the law, even to this day. Our job in such circumstance is to discover the underlying reason for God's commands. Armed with such knowledge we can then present to a society where non-belief is significant those reasons, and we will thus preserve our free society, and thus be free to carry on with our evangelism.
How do we discover God's underlying reasons for His commands? We become better disciples ourselves. As we come closer to being like Christ, we become better able to see His perspective.
Do you want to change the world? Become a deeply discipled politician - or disciple one.
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