The earliest Christians were sent out to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in a pre-Christian society. Their message about the crucified and resurrected Messiah of Israel being Lord and Savior of the whole world was entirely novel and strange in the ears of the pagan Roman society they were trying to convert. Because their message challenged the religious, social, and political status quo of Roman society, Christians were often seen as dangerous subversives. The Romans did not know much about this newfangled religion, but often assumed the worst of it. For example, Christian talk of brotherly love and consuming the body and blood of Christ inspired rumors that the secret meetings of Christian fanatics included incestuous orgies and cannibalism. The early Christian apologists worked hard to dispel such misconceptions of Christianity, and to show how actual Christian beliefs and practices were good, beautiful, and reasonable.
How different is the situation of Christianity in our society today. After over a millenia of Christendom, of Christianity having a privileged and dominant place in society, our society is now becoming post-Christian. Rather than Christianity being considered something novel and strange, it is considered familiar and trite. Rather than Christianity being considered a new threat to the status quo, it is considered part of the oppressive old status quo. Rather than people assuming the worst of Christianity because they do not know anything about it, people assume the worst of Christianity because they know bad things about Church history.
“Familiarity breeds contempt,” as the saying goes. It is hard to present the Christian gospel as exciting, wonderful good news to a society in which Christianity has been the dominant religion for centuries and centuries. Although the Christian gospel is wonderful, exciting good news, this has been masked by the Christian religion’s often boring rituals, practiced by countless people with no genuine intention of following Jesus.
The sad history of the Church’s collusion with the violent, coercive kingdoms of this world makes Christianity automatically associated with oppression and hypocrisy in many people’s minds. We can point out that the Crusades, the Inquisition, and other examples of Christians acting violently are clearly not representative of genuine, biblical Christianity. But we cannot erase these events from history. Any discussion of the Christianity in our society will now come with this baggage.
For so long, the words “Christianity,” “Christian,” and “Church” have been so often misunderstood, misused, and abused that most people hardly know what we mean when we talk about them. Christianity is considered to be a “religion.” A Christian is considered an adherent of this religion. And the Church is considered an outdated, oppressive institution. The wonderful message of the Christian gospel that God is making all things new through Jesus, and that He calls us to participate in this renewal of creation by becoming a part of a community of genuine disciples of Jesus has largely been lost. It has been lost because, for centuries, Christians have by and large failed to visibly embody this gospel truth in their lives.
How do faithful Christians go about proclaiming the gospel in such a context? The New Testament cannot give us any direct guidance in answering this question, since the apostles could not possibly have imagined the situation of Christendom, much less the situation of post-Christendom. We are in uncharted territory.
It is clear that the dominant social strategies of the contemporary American church are not working. The strategy of liberal and “progressive” Christians is to just cover what American culture is already saying with a thin veneer of Christian language. This does not work because, well, it is effectively an abandonment of any attempt to proclaim the gospel at all. The strategy of the religious right is to try to turn back the clock to Christendom, when Christianity was culturally dominant and could be taken for granted. This does not work, both because it is a futile effort, and because Christendom was not a faithful way of Church and government being related to begin with. The strategy of evangelicalism is to try to increase the size of the visible church by getting people to embrace a “personal relationship” with God. This does not work, because it produces a subjective, individualistic form of Christianity that fails to genuinely embody God’s Kingdom in a visible manner.
The gospel message does not present an invitation to believe in an abstract religion, philosophy, or theory; it presents an invitation to become a participant in God’s Kingdom by joining a community of disciples in which that Kingdom is visibly embodied. This means that the intelligibility of the gospel message is dependent on whether such a community is available to see and join. Extending an invitation to someone to join the Church has little meaning if the Church is not being the Church.
Thus, if we want to faithfully proclaim the gospel in a post-Christian society, perhaps we first need to focus on bringing about reform and revival in the Church. If we want the hackneyed Christian message we tell people to seem true and relevant to them, perhaps we first need to show them what it means. If we want to faithfully proclaim the New Testament gospel, perhaps we first need to recover the way of being Church taught in the New Testament and embodied in the early Church.
At the same time, we are surrounded by spiritually lost people, and Hell is a very real possibility. We cannot just abandon our responsibility of telling them the good news about Jesus while we wait for the Church to visibly align with that good news. We must continue to preach the good news about Jesus to lost people. But in a post-Christian context, this will be a very messy endeavor, requiring us to deal with and cut through preconceived notions derived from the Christian “religion” before getting people to understand the true Christian gospel. This will require much wisdom and discernment. It will require us to show genuine repentance for the Church’s unfaithful ways. Above all it will require much love for those we are trying to reach, whatever their preconceived attitudes towards Christianity may be.
A daunting task of proclaiming the gospel in an often hostile culture lies ahead of the American church, just as it did for the early Christians. If they were able to faithfully carry out this mission, then so can we. But only if, as they were, we are solidly committed to conforming ourselves to the truth of God’s Word and being attentive to how Christianity is perceived in our society.