There are great debates taking place right now in the US concerning the influence of the church in and on society. To what extent does the church (all Christians, in a collective sense) have political clout and how fervently should it be involved in social activism? To what point should it exercise such muscle, or even have it?
In most of the places that we have visited over the last six months, that question is not even being asked. It couldn’t be asked because Bible-believing Christians are a minority of a minority in those places. Other religious systems dominate the culture and are intertwined with those in power so much that these Christians are nearly invisible within their own countries. Their political weight is close to nil.
Do they suffer from being in this powerless position? Sometimes they do. In one country we visited Christians are trying to get a local government to agree to let them acquire land for a burial ground. Even such a “normal” request is being met with resistance. Their small numbers also mean that they usually do not have a voice that can be heard in denouncing problems such as corruption, human trafficking, or religious prejudice. Sometimes, they are even in a position where they don’t want to become more visible as this could lead to more negative attention and reaction by the majority movements.
But on the whole, it seems like the question of political and social influence and the lack of it doesn’t affect them because it has hardly crossed their minds. They are too busy bringing people to know the Lord, serving the weak and defenseless around them, and building the church to even bother with such a useless distraction. Their energy is focused on proclamation and service. Period.
We did see one striking example of a church located in a country which has complete religious freedom that was using its influence wisely. Instead of promoting itself or a narrow range of hot-button issues, it works humbly as an advocate for those in the country who the powers-that-are were overlooking, particularly handicapped people and immigrants. Because of this, the church is listened to and respected. I saw the same “service ethic” carried out by the church I visited in Zambia last year.
The subject of influence seems to only be one that is a concern for wealthy, majority Christian movements. History shows that such concern rarely leads to positive spiritual results and may even hurt God’s mission in that society. So much time, as well as mental and spiritual energy, is expended on something that often seems to actually move even the way Christians think further and further away from the goals that the Bible describes for the people of God: that of building a just Kingdom that spans all eras and cultures, and that is characterized by faithfulness and humble service to others. It seems flagrantly evident from my observations that the individual members of those minority churches we observed are closer to expressing these goals than are so many people in our established Western-culture churches. Yes, they struggle. But they have a focus and intensity – maybe even purity, in the sense of simplicity – in how they understand salvation and its consequences that are hard to find in the Western world.
My thoughts on this subject are obviously colored by the fact that I lived and served in France for so many years. France’s Christian history spans 12 centuries, but the Christian church in all of its forms is in the process of being totally sidelined by the culture. This has happened in spite of the fact that at one point in history, it was THE influence in French culture, controlling nearly every aspect of life and death for the ordinary citizen. But that total, overall influence only led to corruption and deep resentment, and when the people attained freedom, they spat the Church out like polluted water. Maybe they did “throw the baby out with the bathwater”, but today they make it clear that they will never, never go there again.
Actually attaining the position and influence that we think will help our cause can end up being the thing that hurts it the most. Success often has unintended consequences. Trajectories such as those of the State Churches in Europe should be a cautionary signal for us. They started with the desire to have all of society benefit from the enlightened principles of biblical living, but the influence they gained has actually made such a result all but impossible.
Individual Christians may be called to defend certain causes or promote certain ideas. But, as groups of believers, what are we called to defend or to promote? Who sets the agenda? How should we be serving the Lord until He returns? Personally, I prefer the enthusiasm and hard-working zeal of those Christians we’ve met over the past six months, serving and actually being able to influence people’s lives in spite of facing numerous limitations and constraints, to the ease that allows us to argue with each other and spend our energy on secondary pursuits.
I guess it really is true that travel expands one’s horizons! :-)
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