[Church History] Discussion post: Lessons from the Middle Ages and "Christian America"--too closely aligning the church with culture & society?--submitted in the 2nd wk of July (50/50 mark received)

In a poignant anonymous letter written to someone named “most excellent Diognetus”, 2^nd CE, the secular un-Christianized Roman Hellenic world surrounding the faithful at the time is described as the following: "For the Christians are  distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they  neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked by any singularity...They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death and restored to life. They are poor yet make rich; they are in lack all things, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred." (<The Epistle to Diognetus>, unknown author, 2nd century CE). Fast-forward 2,000 years later to America now, and the 21^st  century Christians living in this country in particular find themselves in much more socio-politically tolerant and much less restricting environment; however, they now find themselves  facing a set of some difficult challenges of their own—particularly the contemporary Christian worldviews of economics on wealth, materialism, etc., which could aggregately have engendered to bring about the erosion and corruption of the core messages contained within the Gospel, which the 2^nd century Christians gladly sacrificed their own lives for—giving up their temporal earthly livelihood and residence rather than being absorbed into the larger secularism of comfort, leisure, apathy, hedonism and aspirituality of paganism, which threatened to engulf them. Henceforth, they kept their faith as a group of “Puritans” through their steadfast undying loyalty to their Lord and Savior the Resurrected Jesus of Nazareth. As a matter of fact, “Christian America” might be a thing of the bygone past or an illusion now since by and large, the Christian world people used to know even in their grandparent’s generation not too long ago no longer exists anymore in much of the land. Just like much of Europe, the Christian America might have fallen too, having been victimized by the secular world in which it has lived in, mingled with and coexisted together for the past several centuries.

            Living in a total (puritanical) “Christian society”, which the Augustine of Hippo wrote and envisioned  about in <the City of God> opposed to living in the earthly city/country is not such a novelty of an idea: realistically or empirically-speaking, however, it is just an idea, not something which can be established on earth and accomplished with any great sustained amount of success until Jesus returns to earth again (Cf. Daniel 7:23-14; Matthew 16:27-28; Luke 9:26-27; Revelation 20:1-3) What is the ideal society or the nation until then, especially for the believers? The monotheistic ancient Israelites, who might have idealized about the theistic society/kingdom, learned it in hard way (cf. 1 Samuel 8) after experiencing Saul and a host of evil idolatrous rulers, e.g., Ahab/Jezebel, Manasseh, etc.,  reverberating through royal court annals of their failed several centuries of experiment in split monarchies of the Northen and Southern Kingdoms, of which each fell to the marauding ruthless foreign powers in Assyria in 8^th century BCE and Babylon in 6^th century BCE, respectively, with a majority of the inhabitants from the Holy Land was taken as war prisoners/captives to have never heard from again since.  Plato from ancient Greece, rumored to have descended from a legendary Nephilim-like figure Poseidon, wrote that in his well-regarded influential writing <The Republic>, “For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individuals than justice and he who argues as I have been supposing will say that they are right. If you could imagine anyone obtaining this power of becoming invisible and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this.” (Plato, “The Republic II”, p.312, Great Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1991).

           Europe during the Medieval Period, roughly from 500 to 1500 CE, based on the feudal system, experienced the ill effects of the religious supremacy/tyranny gone sour in form of all-powerful Catholicism or at the hand of papacy, often in alliance with the monarchs and powerful lords (self-interested aristocracy), which stretched its unwelcomed far-reaching administrative and clerical tentacles into the matters of average citizen’s daily life and his (weekly) ecclesiastical activities: Al McGrath wrote (Christ Against Culture): “The relationship is one of antagonism, whether arising from culture’s hostility toward the church or the inverse. Such attitudes were found in some early church writers, such as Tertullian, and in monasticism. In the Protestant tradition, this attitude was initially associated with the Radical Reformation and writers such as Menno Simons and Jakob Hutter…” (McGrath, p. 314.) McGrath then lists the Amish as a group which heeded the teachings of Simons as the group isolated themselves from the rest of the secular world as it established its own unique communities mostly across the rural America based on the late 17^th century rural European communities.

            McGrath does explain in chapter 11-13 by citing the works of Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), the Five different models/interactions between church (Protestantism) and the culture which have developed over time: (As mentioned above Christ Against Culture is one of such models.) Regarding “Christ Above Culture” paradigm, he wrote citing Paul Tillich, “The Church judges culture, including its own forms of life. For its forms are created by culture, as its substance makes culture possible. The Church and culture are within, not alongside each other. And the Kingdom of God includes both while transcending both.” (McGrath, pp. 316-317). Lutheran view (Christ and Culture in Paradox) is that of the “two totally different moralities exist side by side; a private Christian ethic, reflecting the rule of embodied in the Sermon on the Mount, and a public morality, based upon force. The tensions are manifest, and the result is a permanent tension.” (McGrath, pp. 317-318.) In “The Christ of Culture” argument, mostly liberal-bent writers advocated the need for a “reconstruction of belief “in the light of modern knowledge” since in their mind, “Christian faith represents what “the world values most dearly.” (McGrath, p. 315.) “Influential in Germany, England and the United States,” this worldview is rather looked down upon as “a dilution of the essence of Protestantism that reduced it to a mere endorsement of prevailing cultural norms.” (McGrath, p. 316.)  In “Christ the Transformer of Culture”, “The theme is conversion…For Newbigin, the notion of “Christendom” meant “the synthesis between the Gospel and the culture of the western part of the European peninsula and remained of Asia” that had developed during the Middle Ages and remained in place, though in a weakened form—in other words, Neibuhr’s “Christ above culture” model. To remedy the situation, Newbigian called for the rediscovery of a missionary perspective aimed at the conversion of culture.” (McGrath, p. 319.)

           Per the author, John Calvin, a proponent of usury practice by Christians among other dubious legacy left behind despite his overall theological brilliance with lasting influence, failed in his “theocracy” vision as McGrath pointed out, “Those who speak loosely about Calvin’s “theocracy” in Geneva need to be reminded that all secular power, and not a little religious power, remained firmly in the hands of the city council throughout his lifetime. Calvin’s successes and failures at Geneva can be accounted for largely through his shifting relationships with the real source of authority within the city.” (McGrath, p. 319.) Much like the ideas of his predecessors—Plato of Athens, Augustine of Hippo, et al--Calvin’s ideas were “intellectual”, “not practical or institutional” as McGrath concluded.

           In closing, nowadays  “Christian America” perhaps need to be largely viewed as “cultural Christendom”, not in an evangelical sense anymore these days, particularly in the light of what have gone on in the past 50-60 years culminating during the pandemic years, where a large contingent of Christians and particularly the Christian leadership have failed miserably; many left church to perhaps never to return. The body was already infected by cancerous cells long ago per insightful observers. To many casual observers it is a dying breed as in “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.” (2 Timothy 3:5 KJV). However, this large-scale Culturalization/Secularization/De-evangelization has not been just confined to the American continent: it has spread to other affluent countries such as South Korea, the world’s 6^th largest economy, and a nation which boasts the second largest international missionaries sent into the field after the #1 USA.  The symptoms in that nation are eerily similar to those of America.

          McGrath mentioned our Lord’s exhortation as in “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again” It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by people. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do people light a lamp and put in under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see hour good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:13-16 New American Standard Bible) as a reminder for the Christians to rise above the insidious pop culture which might drag them down. Amen. But, is there any tangible hope?

           “Christian America” would most likely need to be redefined as and relegated to “Christian State(s)” or “Christian Universities/School(s)” or “Christian groups” per this author’s humble opinion based on numerous socio, economical, pop cultural, educational factors. Darwinian naturalism for one thing has overtaken the ivory towers. Wokeism is everywhere, etc. The ruler of this earth is Satan as the 2^nd century Christians experienced it first hand in the amphitheaters,  at the burning stakes, and perished away in underground dungeons, etc.: However, as Jesus remined us there is hope and bright future for the faithful, “And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:20 ESV). And the young and old will dream and prophesy as the Holy Spirit will pour out His Power over them, aplenty. The impoverished third world countries and the remote people groups are still awaiting to hear the gospel: who is ready to go risk his/her own life to reach out to them while the newest Installments from the Disney World, The Dreamworks Studio  or the Tom Cruise-starring Mission Impossible are showing in local movie theaters? The Lee household for one isn’t ready yet.

[Sources]

Alister McGrath, “Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: A History From the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First”: Harper Collins: New York, NY, 2007.    

**My reply to someone named William's discussion post:

Hi William, thanks for your well-thought out and -worded post as I read your articulate post with great interest. I’d just like to say a few words from my study/reading this week to what you’ve adroitly described, but my stance on this issue is pretty much the same: the spiritual/theological corruption of the Middle Ages and the parallel phenomenon of the “Chrisitan America” now.

Well, America had it good for a long while there; there was some catch phrase or a rally cry called “Manifest Destiny” from the bygone century a long ago, which helped legitimize the American encroachment and expansion into (unwelcomed) territories not only on its own soil but all over the world. (You know, in Asian (“Korean”) culture I grew up as I read “old family books” and so on as I grew up, I also found that there were always some manufactured or legitimate or righteous reasons or justification or excuses the would-be-martyrs or the die-hard patriots/Confucian scholar/official would come up with before taking a full plunge into his heroic deed of bravery and courage to heed the mandate from up above if not within oneself.)

Manifest Destiny is defined per a college history book as “Most Americans believed that the superiority of their institutions and white culture bestowed on them a God-given right to spread their civilization across the continent. They imagined the West as a howling wilderness empty and undeveloped. If they recognized Indians and Mexicans at all, they dismissed them as primitive drags on progress who would have to be redeemed, shoved aside and isolated, or exterminated. The sense of uniqueness and mission was as old as the Puritans, but by the 1840s the conviction of superiority had been bolstered by the young nation’s amazing success.” (Roark et al, “The American Promise: A History of The United States, 2000, p. 332.) The Spanish catholic bishops decided that the native Americans were humans much like themselves after all after exhaustive physical and psychological examinations, and the slave traders/owners had to legitimize their actions using the scriptures (Cf. Gen. 9:18-29) later. The point: the religion or falsely formed/indoctrinated doctrines or false faith gives a person or a group of people a boldness and a pair of wings to go out and commit atrocities--systematically annihilate a whole subrace of human beings if it comes to that. We’ve seen this.

Like any other regrettable slow-death processes/events/decays in the past, which might have been avoidable (?), the secularization and the resulted impotence of church at large in America these days is largely due to the fact that Christians have become complacent: They settled. That is our nature--if left alone. We went away from the gospel, which is all about the Cross and Jesus the Messiah, but instead we’ve sought to build a sand castle seeking some other forms of a messiah, which would rescue us from our doldrums in wrong place and at wrong times, much like the 1^st century Jews, who did reject Jesus, the long-prophesied Redeemer of the world because he didn’t fit their idea of a conquering military hero messiah type. We know that as written in Psalm 118 and Mark 12, the rejected stone by the builders ultimately became the cornerstone of the church for the gentile nations and the whole humanity.

What happened to our school? I’d just mention one phenomenon which McGrath cited in his book: “A specifically Christian identity has been lost, either in order to focus on religion in general, without any specific commitment to its Christian form, or in order to focus on other disciplines for which Christian identity either confers no advantages or is seen to be an impediment. The pressures created by the need for academic accreditation from secular agencies has played no small role in catalyzing this transition.” (McGrath, p. 341.) We compromised. Well, as the Lord said when they abuse and beat us, and arrest and persecute us, then we know that we must be doing something right in his eyes. And that is how the pure gold gets burnished-- through fire.

[Sources]

Alister McGrath, “Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First”. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2007.          

James L. Roark, “The American Promise: A History of the United States”. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s”, 2000.**

**My reply to someone named Tyler's discussion topic:

Hi Tyler, I read your well-written post with delight since I felt like the major points you made reflected major sentiments on the topic in my written post. Well, I'd just like to add a few things in my reply.First, in response to what you said regarding the dual legacies left behind by Charlemagne (or any strong leader in his mold who took a firm control of both political and ecclesiastical reigns and consolidated into one fist of iron), “…specifically during the time marked by the coronation of Charlemagne in A.D. 800, demonstrates the profound impact of aligning church and society.  This impact offers both inspiration and caution for believers today who are assessing the relationship between church and society.”: Yes, things such as implementation and establishment of critical sacraments should be lauded, then on the other extreme, rampant corruption which ensued afterwards where church and state were the co-conspirators in consolidating and wielding their much unchallenged power into building up their materialistic wealth at will at the sheer exploitation of the laity and average citizenry at large while the widespread erosion of the stated ecclesiastical missions and abandonment of biblical messages of Agape love and Filioque service is totally lamentable. One such practice of corruption was the sale of the indulgencies as we know, which lit a fire under Martin Luther’s evangelical belly as he campaigned for the reform; Noll wrote, “As a prime example, the protest of his Ninety-Five Theses against the selling of indulgences in 1517 made him a figure of instant controversy, not so much because of the theology underlying the theses but because important church officials, including the pope, received a share of monies raised by indulgence sales.” (Noll, p. 136.) This just goes to show how rampant and pervasive the sale of immoral and unbiblical indulgences was! Even the papacy was all in on it. Power lacking check and balance proves yet again to go corrupt time and again as shown throughout the history of mankind.

(Even though ascetic living as in the desert fathers, monastic living/monasticism isolated in some remote areas, which yielded notable contribution in its own right, and a segregated community in the middle of nowhere in the secular world such as the Amish may serve some purpose, as I argued for in my own post, the core mission of the believers should be among the people and world—no matter how miserably the overall efforts of evangelism may fail in the end.)Second, I’d like to mention regarding the laity's increased role/ability in interpreting the scriptures on their own and thusly able to lead independent self-guided spiritual discernment without the aid of overbearing clergy.  John Wycliffe played a major role in this movement as McGrath wrote, ‘One of Wycliffe’s best-known slogans, shamelessly plagiarized by Abraham Lincoln, affirms the fundamentally democratizing  consequences of giving people access to the Bible: this book would give rise to “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” (McGrath, p. 214.) Erasmus’s publishing the Greek text of the NT and Luther’s demand “that all Christians should be able to read the Bible for themselves. Lay access to the Bible was about power as much as it was about encouraging personal spirituality.” (McGrath, p. 214.) ABSOLUTELY! The difficult Vulgate bible, which was pretty much the monopoly in the hands of the clergy who could afford to be educated in the Middle Ages, eventually gave a way to Scriptures being translated into different European languages, not only into English, but French, German, Spanish, etc. And this helped usher in rising of the nationalism in Europe, but also the eventual dawn of the Era of the Renaissance, since the masses became literate. Soon the Industrial Revolution would follow down the road for the benefits of the whole world--mostly. Advancement on printing technology, of course, paved the way for all these remarkable changes to take place as German Johannes Guthenberg invented the printing press in the mid 15^th century. (Korean’s claim to the 1^st invented movable metal type printing has a real validity even though perhaps the invention remained isolated and did not contribute anything to the birth of  Guthernberg’s printing press and his bible.)

[Sources]

Alister McGrath, “Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First”. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2007.          

Mark A Noll, “Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity”. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022.**