News Intelligence Analysis
Christian Reconstruction
God's Glorious Millennium?
From Paul Thibodeau's Web Site
For what shall it profit Christianity,
if it shall gain the whole world,
and lose its own soul?
The Religious Right and Christian Faith
By Gabriel Fackre
From the Conclusion:
In a few years Christians will mark the fiftieth anniversary
of the Barmen Declaration. In 1934 the Confessing Church in Germany
gave unforgettable voice to its central allegiance. Confronted
by a "German Christian" reinterpretation of the gospel,
Barmen asserted:
Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. We reject the false doctrine, as though the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and beside this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths, as God's revelation.
These things must be said again a half century later in another
land. No "blood and soil" philosophy or nationalist
movement comparable to German Nazism imperils the United States
right now, contrary to the inflated rhetoric of some critics
of the right. But the perennial temptation of confusing God's
word with one or another human word is very much with us in the
Religious Right.
In this book I have tried to lay bare the theological presuppositions
of the political and moral programs of the Religious Right. In
every doctrinal area we have seen loyalty to important aspects
of classical Christian conviction. At the same time, each of
the chapters of the Christian story has told of basic distortions
which warrant Senator Mark Hatfield's evangelical indictment:
As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.
By examining a series of basic Christian beliefs we have seen
that there is more than one kind of secular humanism to be reckoned
with in our time. The substitution of human opinion for God's
Word, Jesus Christ, can take place under the most pious of auspices.
The implicit secular humanism of the Religious Right which imports
partisan political judgments and culture-bound mores into the
proclamation of the gospel, is as anthropocentric as the explicitly
self-congratulatory humanisms of the secular left. The "perspective"
we have seen at work in many points of Christian doctrine--not
all, by any means--rises out of one sector of contemporary secular
experience, the politics and culture of the right. It is processed
through a small, hospitable sector of ecclesial experience. Finally
it takes charge of the purported biblical source and norm through
a highly selective use and interpretation of texts. In many areas
of Christian teaching this theological method arrives at conclusions
that diverge from classical Christian teaching with its christological
norm, inclusive biblical source, and full-orbed ecclesial response.
The response to the Religious Right from within the Christian community must be resolute commitment to its own fundamental framework of faith. As with Barmen, we must call ourselves and our brothers and sisters to attend to the one word, Jesus Christ, and to tell our own tale, the Christian story, without addition or subtraction.
In the light of that Word we too shall make our political decisions. But that light illuminates the gift of Christian freedom. We are freed from the illusion that our frail judgments, whether on the right or left end of the political spectrum, can be identified with the Word of God. Christian liberty means that we are free of the ideologies of the right or left, and even free enough to say a human "Yes" or "No" or "Yes and No" to the passions and proposals of one or another when faith and facts warrant it. "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Gal. 5:1).
Gabriel Fackre, The Religious Right and Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1982), pp. 104-106 (Conclusion).
Paul Thibodeau
Box 64233
Thorncliffe Station
Calgary, AB T2K 6J0
Canada
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Humankind Come of Age by Paul Thibodeau
Created: January 17, 1996
Last Updated: February 5, 2004
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