A New Generation of Christians

After going to GCC for two and a half years and meeting Christians from all around the nation, I have found that my generation of Christians have distinctive characteristics. These are characteristic that I believe will be important to what the American Church looks like once my generation grows up to fill roles in the church; pastors, elders, Sunday School teachers, etc. I have picked five that I think are the most important and also the most likely to remain characteristics after college. For instance, I have noticed the tendency of many Christians to be libertarian politically (i.e. beyond economics; legalized marijuana, the end of censorship laws such as the FCC, ambivalence toward gay marriage, etc.). This is a characteristic that I think will be muted quite a bit after they marry and have children since, as one history professor at GCC reminded me, people tend to become more conservative after they have children. The individualism inherent in libertarianism dies whenever you realize that you are going to have children and you don't want them smoking weed or watching obscene television. Thus these are the five that I feel will be instrumental in shaping the 21st century Church:

*Ecumenical - Although a new generation of Christians may have doctrinal beliefs they are kept personal for greater unity on catholic doctrine, i.e. the tenants of the Apostle's Creed. I find the sectarianism that kept Catholics and Protestants (or even PCA, OPC, and ARP) denominations for cooperating in the past is looked on with disgust among most of my generation. This is not to say that there will necessarily be new unity within the Church in the 21st century. This is expressed by many in my generation by joining non-denominational churches.

*Intellectual - Anti-fundamentalist to the core. My generation, I have found, is far more concerned with having an intellectually informed faith. A faith that communicates effectively with non-Christian circles and is capable of applying the Christian faith to secular learning and vice versa. There is a growing dissatisfaction with the simple Christianity of a generation ago that was strictly dogmatic. A more complex faith is cherished.

*Grace-oriented - There is an emphasis among my generation of Christians on God's mercy and grace. It is understood that these things were completely undeserved by any human effort and true Christianity is celebrating mercy and grace rather than human good works. The person who shows evidence of God's grace is seen as truer than a person who is a teetotaler and Victorian. Tendency to see salvation entirely as a gift of God without human cooperation or at least limited human cooperation. This is, I think, a reaction to the legalism found in so many Christian churches a generation ago. A danger is ignoring the doctrine of sanctification.

*Non-political - although Christians have political ideals they reject that the Church should be tied to one political movement. They are against special-interests as a whole. They are very anti-Religious Right. They emphasize the Church's role in cultural renewal instead of the government's. As a friend told me recently, "I get very nervous when the Church and the Republican party are bound together."

*Missions/Charity emphasis - Many believe that missions and charity are a primary concern of the Church and the best way to spread the Gospel as they display visually God's love. Though this is certainly distinct from Social Gospel of the late 19th and early 20th centuries because missions and charity are the means not the ends.

More Clarifications

By setting myself apart from libertarians (I would set myself apart from neo-cons but there are less of those at GCC so I don't feel it as necessary to discuss them) I have been trying to establish myself as a Classical Conservative. My political philosophy can be summed up in one phrase: the tolerable society. We cannot hope for one single institution, as has been commonly held in in modernity, whether the market or the government, to create the perfect society. Indeed, utopia is, I believe, non-existant. The good society, which is merely the tolerable society, is one where the various institutions of human existance are in balance and all are tempered by faith - or well-ordered inner order. Above I have added a figure of my concept of limited spheres. What it means is that each institution conrtrols a sphere of society. For government, this means I support a limited, but not necessarily small, government. These spheres are best defined by some sort of national constitution. Overlappin all of these spheres, however, is the large sphere of faith which influenes all the other spheres. In my political philosophy this is, or ought to be, the Christian faith but in non-Christian societies this would whatever worldview is dominant. Inevitably, our "religion" - that set of beliefs that we bind ourselves to (the literally meaning of religion) - influences every aspect of society. In the diagram it is distinct from the institutional church which is confined to its own sphere - the sphere of salvation. The sphere of faith does not mean that the institutional Church should influence all spheres of society.

Why I am not a Libertarian - Part III

Idolatry of Mammon

Finally, I am not a libertarian because I do not belief in the inherent “magic” of the market. Now, I would describe myself as a capitalist in the sense that I believe that the capitalist system is the most efficient economic system available. Yet, economic efficiency is not always the most desirable thing, especially when it comes at the expense of other important aspects of society. To this extent, I believe the “free market” should be chastened by two things; morality and law. For morality, I naturally believe that the Christian religion is most useful here. I believe that the libertarian faith that the market is inherently self-correcting and will, by itself, create a just social and economic situation is unfounded. Capitalism, by itself, is not perfect. The problem is that too many people (economists especially) have a “Cold War framework” where they polarize all economic theories into two opposing camps; the free and the centrally planned or, in more abstract terms, the “socialist” and the “capitalist.” It leads to a sort of fatalism among libertarians who admit that capitalism is perfect yet resort to say that its “the best we got.” Yet I believe that there is another option, one that has pure capitalism chastened by faith and justice.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Christian groups worked very hard to alleviate poverty and Christians today to keep up with that tradition. Unfortunately, it seems that many Christians today have the attitude that the poor, especially those on welfare, are lazy and immoral and therefore do not deserve our charity. Libertarianism, at times, almost takes on a Social Darwinian aspect where inefficient businesses or workers must wither and die for the betterment of society. Yet, charity, by its very definition, is something that is not deserved. In all Christian economic thought, as in all Christian thought, the model of Christ should be at the fore. For Christ did not come to those who deserved him but to those that did not and he came to them (us) give grace. Perhaps the poor do deserve their poverty (though I think we must be very careful about generalizing) but those who have been successful, who have accumulated “merit” as Christ did, ought to give to economically poor just as Christ gave to the spiritually poor. Perhaps through this ministry of grace those who are poor because of their lifestyle may become overwhelmed by charity and may be transformed. I do not mean this simply in the sense of soup kitchens. It is true that during the early industrial revolution that the workers were receiving “fair” wages in that based on the supply of labor and the productivity of the worker they were fair. Yet there were far from ideal. The Victorian factory owner that prided himself in his faith ought to have given parts of his income to improve the income of his workers. This would have been the Christ-like thing to do. Instead, they held to Social Darwinian ideas and the “Iron Law of Wages” that helped to perpetuate Marxism and socialism after mid century. Marx became so popular because, while his theories about improving society were off the mark, his sympathy with the worker and the indictment of bourgeois society was spot on. The Christian must always chose charity in his disposable income instead of luxury to feed his prideful greed. Always bear in mind the proverb: “give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me.”

Also, I personally reject the mysticism that the far left and the far right have attributed to business and economics. To the left, business is the greedy and all-corrupting facet of society that poisons the government and exploits the worker. Business is therefore controlled by the state or the "vanguard of the proletariat." To the far right (or libertarians) the market and business is a pure and perfect institution that, magically, transforms greed and vice into virtue. So holy is it that the sinful hands of government bureaucracy cannot even touch it. I do not see the realm of business as any different from any of the other areas of society and government involvement in it should be the same as in any other facet of society; enough to secure justice. In the wake of the recent economic collapse, caused in part by the scams of corporate executives, I believe that tougher regulation is definitely needed to ensure that there more oversight to catch fraudulent businessmen and harsher penalties to discourage fraud to begin with. It is true that people who do business with banks and other financial institutions do so voluntarily but they do so under the assumption that the law will force these institutions to act honestly and responsibly. Moreover, the actions of these institutions affect more people than those who voluntarily do business therefore they need to especially be watched to ensure that they are conducting business honorably and responsibly. I also, unlike some libertarians, believe that certain reforms from the Progressive era (the FDA, laws regulating working conditions, safety regulations, environmental regulation, etc.) are very necessary because they are concerned with justice. Again, this all builds on my first principle that justice is the primary function of governments and not “securing rights.” As a final remark, I want to distinguish between regulation and control. I do not believe that government should control businesses. Their involvement in regulating business should be on the same level that governments regulate aspects in society to ensure justice is upheld. The economy is a complex system and cannot be run by any central planning committee or jobs czar.