SO WHAT IF THE AMERICAN CHURCH<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
IS RADICALIZED?
 
Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: As free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king. 1 Peter 2:13-17 (KJV)
 
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Matthew 22:39 (KJV)
 
For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, go, and he goeth; and to another, come, and he cometh; and to my servant, do this, and he doeth it. When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.  Matthew 8:9-10 (KJV)
 
And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, this day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke 19:8-10 (KJV)
 
As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.  Galatians 6:10 (KJV)
 
The Holy Scriptures do not set forth a clear picture that provides an unarguable image of how the church should relate to the culture where it resides.  Similarly the Scriptures do not give us an unambiguous representation of how the members of the Body of Christ should relate to either the government or the culture in which they dwell.  What it does do is sets forth many references to such things as principles of conduct, ministry objectives, and goals for relationships.  Over the many centuries these have all been studied and debated for the intent of either seeking an agreeable model that would provide quantifiable methodologies for determining the priorities to carry out the church's various ministry responsibilities or to seek broader unanimity between the various churches and sects. 
 
 In the end it has proven to be much easier to agree upon things that the church and the members of the Body should do but not so easy to define how to fulfill those ministry responsibilities.  Consequently, to a great degree every church is relatively free to define its ministry responsibilities and standards as it see fit.  Further, the church is free to modify its position on their articles of faith, constitution or principles as the times and surrounding culture changes.  For that reason one should be clear as to the definitions used in any discussion or argument involving those two entities.  Also, one must recognize the difference between the visible church and the invisible Body of Christ.  The church is made up of people who are both believers and non-believers, or to state it another way, saved and unsaved.  But the Body of Christ, known only by God, is the true invisible church made up of all believers of all time.  However, there will be occasions that I will write about that segment of the Body that is living in the United States.
 
From the very earliest church days, the lack of clearly stated biblical text concerning the methodology and purpose for ministering and living under a specific form of government and residing within the culture where God has placed the church and individual Christians has been the basis for volumes of writings about how the biblical declarations should shape the lives and conduct of the visible church and individual Christians.  The purpose of this treatise is not to explore those writings but only to show how down through the ages the accumulated wisdom of the most scholarly writers has not been able to resolve the first century issues that still plague us in the twenty-first century. 
 
One such argument, used as an example for the many others, has ranged from the Fifth Century writings of Augustine of Hippo on the Christian interpretation of a just war.  For his Fifth Century writing, Augustine reached back to the First Century before Christ to search the writings of Cicero.  Subsequent building blocks on Augustine's writings have been put in place by such people as the Thirteenth Century Thomas Aquinas, the Fifteenth Century Stanislaw of Skarbimierz, Sixteenth Century Francisco de Vitoria and even the Twenty-First Century has produced a number of scholarly papers.  In each case, the author's desire was to shape policy for how and why a government and its people should recognize war as an instrument of either national or church policy.  They each were seeking to resolve their own conflict for such an extreme human tragedy in their own time, be it the justification for the defense of the Roman Empire, the Roman Catholic directed Holy Crusades, the Conquest of America by Spain, or today's war in Iraq or the bombing of Libya.  Through all these sixteen plus centuries of building and refining the treatise on how to define and conduct a just war, there still is neither agreement on the details of what is or is not a just war, when one can decide whether a particular war has a moral basis or even if combat can be structured such that the various conditions of a just war can be satisfied. 
 
Again, this paper is not intimately concerned about furthering the Just War body of knowledge but only using that one example of how centuries of writing by some of the world's greatest minds and students of the Bible has still not resolved to everyone's satisfaction a solution that will satisfy both biblical standards and the conditions of the world in which we live.  Sadly, the same is true of almost every aspect of life that deals with the responsibility of Christians in Twenty-First Century America and what is the proper role for the churches where those Christians meet to worship.   
 
Recent writings that continue to explore the role of the church as salt and light in the culture generally fall along a spectrum of choices between two extremes: to have a complete disengagement from any social or political issues or to have a complete engagement in social and political matters, which would most commonly be seen as a social gospel.  In reality, almost all churches fall somewhere in between the two extremes with a variable mixture of both disengagement and involvement.  In so doing, they seldom find that balance which will develop a unity among the many separate churches and thereby provide the church with a meaningful avenue for exerting influence on those national social and political discourses that have biblical implications.  While many will argue that the church should not be diverted from its mission of preaching the Gospel, they cannot argue that the church does not have the responsibility to properly instruct and disciple its members so that they will be capable of acting as responsible citizens in sharing the burdens of government by voting with a studied intelligence for those people and issues that will provide for a healthy environment and safety for all, to share in the burden of the defense of the nation, to hold their elected representatives accountable to the expectations for which they sought office and to participate in those opportunities to maintain high community standards and moral living. 
 
The church is God's agent here on earth and as such has been charged with such things as fulfilling the Great Commission, honoring the Lord God, discipling the members, caring for its own members, producing mature stable Christians and doing good in the world.  Even this list of purposes can be highly debatable as to whether this is the complete list, the proper order in which they are listed and are they inclusive or exclusive. 
 
Christ's response to the lawyer in Matthew 22:35-40 was that the first and great commandment was to love the Lord thy God and the second was like unto it, to love thy neighbor as thyself and on those two great commandments hung all of the law and prophets.  He also responded to a lawyer, who asked what he must do to inherit eternal life, in Luke 10:25-37 by relating the story of the Good Samaritan. Christ told of a traveler who would not pass by a man that had been badly abused by barbarous thieves and left injured and naked by the side of the road.  In his helpless state, the beaten man had been ignored by those who by culture should have been his helping friends.   Finally, the traveler, who by birth should not have been a friend, stopped and gave the man care and took him to an inn for further care with the promise to the inn keeper that he would be responsible for any additional costs incurred in getting the abused man's health restored so he could leave on his own.  In both responses the Lord was pressing home the point that we are all neighbors to each other and emphasizing to the lawyers that the core of our life and service should stem from a heart filled with love.  Christ knew that the lawyers were trying to entrap him and that they wanted to deal with the subject in general or philosophical terms.  The lawyer in the Luke citation, verse 29, wanted to limit his responsibility by a narrow definition of who his neighbor was.   Christ would have none of that and He pressed the point by using the specific example that our neighbor is anyone who has a need that we can meet.  Christ chose to show that it is only when love is the initiator of our service and relationships can we have a god-like character and inherit eternal life. 
 
The church has had more difficulty in verbalizing and fulfilling the second great commandment than it has the first great commandment.  It is thought to be a relatively easy concept to properly honor God once it has been determined who God is and then you are only left with the question of what I must do to properly honor Him.  Can I fulfill that commandment through my Bible reading, prayers, tithes and offerings, and attending the regular services?   In actuality, those who are walking with God know, as did Paul, that fulfilling the First Great Commandment is not as easy as so many of us believe.  Humanly, fulfilling the Master's call to honor the Second Great Commandment appears to be a much more difficult task until one learns to walk by faith and trust God in learning to love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Making the effort to understand his needs by walking in his shoes and then putting those needs ahead of our own desires cannot be accomplished without yielding to the leading of the Holy Spirit.  To love another person, one must first know and understand that person and be prepared to be a part of his life.  As the world has become more mobile and communications unlimited, it has become easier to lose sight of those outside of our direct circle of influence.  Because the government has created many programs designed to meet the social needs of the less fortunate, we have become more possessive of our own time and resources while falling into the trap of evaluating our conduct by answering the question, 'What is in it for me?'  Sadly, the church has lost the joy that was once derived by sacrificially serving others.  Christ revealed in the Matthew 25:35-40 passage that as his servants gave food, beverage, clothing, shelter, medical attention or companionship to those with any of those needs they were doing it unto Him.  We have lost sight of the fact that the poor and needy can be one of God's blessings to us by providing us with a means to serve Him.  
 
The church is not immune from the changes and influences of the prevailing culture.  As the culture goes through radical changes, such as the Sixties Revolution in the United States, its tentacles reach into every pocket of that civilization.  That revolution has impacted the music, politics, attitude towards sex and family, alternate lifestyles, entertainment and also the church.  In all of these cases there has been a tearing away from what was traditional in both practice and values.  Those who lived out their formative years during those turbulent times have come of age and have taken their radical ideas with them into their professional, personal, social, political and religious lives.   
 
The lack of clearly documented biblical methodologies and practices for church and individual conduct has made it possible for the American church to become just another radicalized segment of the culture.  Not only has there been a widening chasm between churches, that as little as fifty years ago were able to overlook their doctrinal differences but agree upon social and moral standards, there has been a falling away from the recognition of biblical principles.   The process of turning away from the traditional biblical methodologies and practices of the church has resulted in years of turmoil as major mainline denominations struggled with such things as the role of women in the church.  Can they be ordained as pastors, serve as deacons or does the messages of the second chapters of First Timothy and Titus still have the same meaning in the Twenty-First Century?  The same type of arguments have been equally divisive in regards to the role of both homosexuals and divorced people in the church.  There has also been divisiveness over what is the appropriate type of music for the various types of worship services, be it the more formal Sunday morning or the less formal Sunday evening and midweek services.  All of these arguments have led to divisions within individual churches, the secession of churches from the main body, and significant losses of members to either other churches or their terminating church attendance.  Many churches have tried to mask over the music division by having several different Sunday morning services, known as traditional or contemporary.  Too often this results in something like two churches in one building as the worshipping members become most closely affiliated with their service group and not the church at large. 
 
The segment of many congregations that is generally being marginalized are the older members, who have been the most reluctant to trash the traditional methods and to accept the radical changes.  Too often the church leadership has given those members the challenge of 'our way or the highway'.  The proponents for the new music and other revolutionary changes like to fall back on the argument that we must do this if we are going to be able to reach the modern young people.  Seldom are they willing to consider the fact that one reason for the falling church membership is that through the liberalizing and radical changes those who attend church are finding less value in the content.  Studies and polls are revealing that the younger the age group the fewer that will openly profess to be Evangelical believers.  Some studies have offered the opinion that a high percentage of young people reared in Christian homes are lost to the faith by the time they graduate from high school because their in-church education has not been sufficient to counter the anti-Christian beliefs taught in the government schools.  
 
Through all of this the church, and its members, have become less relevant in the political and cultural change processes.  This has caused many of the more active and concerned church members to turn to para-church organizations to seek camaraderie in the battles that they believe have to be won if the nation is to retain its moral heading, leadership role in the world and provide for its own national security.  There has been a surge in the para-church community as organizations have taken up the slack relinquished by the church over such issues as;
·         The content of the government school systems instructional materials, with special emphasis being spotlighted on the exclusive teaching of evolution and refusal to permit creationism to be taught as an alternate theory. 
·         The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to retain the definition of marriage to be only the uniting in wedlock of one man and one woman.
·         The protection of the unborn from abortion, strongly focused on the inhumane practice known as the late abortion where medical studies have shown that the aborted babies suffer excruciating pain during the abortion procedure.
·         The development of biblical worldview programs to give youth and young people the training they need to withstand the onslaught against Christian beliefs and moral degradation.
 
Not only has the church lost much of its relevance as a defender for moral purity and ethical behavior in an out of control culture, it is sinking into mediocrity for the various services and arts that were once a hallmark of Christianity.  The excellence in church music performance by both the choirs and members is rapidly deteriorating as the ability to perform four part harmony is lost without the use of hymnals.  The challenge to write musical compositions that will stand the test of time, as has such masterpieces as Handel's Messiah, has disappeared.  No longer does one find new masters of art who are creating paintings that will rival the work of Michelangelo and probably most sad is that the church no longer is the purveyor of educating the youth of the church. At the same time, many churches have drawn so far away from having a role in the political arena that they find it difficult to continue the time honored commitment to join into the recognition of patriotic holidays and to honor those who have been at the forefront of protecting their freedoms and liberties.  Instead of having a cheap grace they want to enjoy a cheap freedom and liberty.
 
The church has gone through such cycles in the past and one should have the hope that God does have a remnant that will, within His providence, come forth to recognize the irony of living under the protection and accepting the services of a government to whom they have not been willing to serve or recognize.  In Christ's admonition that we are to go forth to do good to all men, would He have expected that they would be prepared to accept their own responsibility to share in the burden of building, maintaining and protecting the nation where they reside?
 
There are other cultural factors that are suffering from a neutered church that to a great extent has chosen to be politically correct and also honoring both diversity and multi-culturalism.  The advocacy for the importance of having stable families has been lost and at this time there are more non-married 'family' groups in the United States than there are married family units.  There are more children being raised in what are called non-traditional homes than at any time in the nation's history.  The future potential for such children is significantly darker and less hopeful than it is for the children raised in traditional homes.  This has been evidenced by the increased drug usage, incarceration, learning problems and reluctance to make their own commitments to life. 
 
For stability and eternal values, a church should have a vision of securing its place as a voice for social stability and the well-being of its members by developing a rock solid doctrinal position that would not so readily yield to the ebb and sway of the culture. It is this type of preparation and stability that is necessary if the church is to insure that it will prevail over the gates of Hell.  At this time, the nation is facing a political and cultural upheaval of political and socialist forces that have united to bring about changes that will generate restrictions upon the ministry and life of both the church and its members.  This movement seeks to restrict public prayer, inhibit military chaplains from praying in the name of Jesus Christ, accept the teaching of all religious history in government schools except Christianity, and last, but certainly not least, to stop Christian broadcasts on the public airways.  The church finds itself in a defensive mode because it did not have the foresight to prepare its members to be the voice that needed to be heard when the movement started.  Much of this turmoil came about as the result of the Frankfurt School fleeing Germany with their Marxist ideals and linking up with a powerful Fabian Socialist, John Dewey.  The seeds of this movement are today bringing about a harvest of anti-Christian movements that will be the basis for persecution.  Yet, the church ignored the long term implications of such a political blow.
 
Today the nation is at the beginning of another equally, if not worse, such movement as Islam is building wedge intrusions into the country to bring about Sharia law.  At no place in the history of the Muslim movement can one find where that religion has existed in a peaceful mode with other religions.  Yet, there are American churches that are opening their doors to hosting Muslim worship opportunities in their facilities.  While these actions may give a short term feeling of good will, they have always been interpreted as a sign of weakness of the hosting religion and that the host religion does not have a core belief system upon which it is founded and projected.  In this case, the church has also not found its voice when it comes to responding to the wide scale persecution of Christians in almost every Muslim country.  Most recently the forces that overthrew the Egyptian government of Mubarak have shown little interest in protecting the rights and lives of some eight million Christians in Egypt.  The same is true in Nigeria, Pakistan and the list goes on.  The widespread practice of Islamists using rape as an instrument of war and domination of women is occurring not only in Muslim countries but in northern European countries that have opened their doors to Muslim refugees.   One cannot believe that Christ expected the church to be silent about such inhumane conduct, especially when it is directed against those who profess to be brothers and sisters in the Lord.  Why is the Second Great Commandment so easily ignored?
 
There are many ongoing revolutions, such as the technological revolution, that will have an impact upon the lives and freedoms of our children and our children's children.  At what point does the church become involved in the process of teaching its members how to live with or be a resistor to those changes so that the future will not be dimmed but remain as bright as it has been for many generations.  In no way is God's arm foreshortened, but He does expect us to use the talents and strengths He has given us to fulfill the ministry of the church, not just for today but for generations to come.  Are we not our brother's keeper and are not future generations also our brothers?       
 
All of the signs of the times indicate that we are living in an age where the Christian church has found its comfort by withdrawing from the conflicts generated as a result of cultural clashes.   Sadly, the church has succumbed to its own radical change, which shows signs of lowering its impact as an Ezekiel watchman for all aspects of the culture where it exists.    While the Scriptures have not given us the details on how the Church should function it has in the last book told us about churches that lost their first love and becoming lukewarm.  Could it be that the American Twenty-first Century church should once again seek its first love and regain the spirit of Pentecost?