The title of this article is provocative. It is intended to be so. It is meant to strike a chord. A specific shame in American Christians that they have neglected for more than ten years. My thought is that American Christians have been silent at home and in their churches about politics and culture because they are scared of splitting their families and churches. This silence is a sin of cowardice that has led to a deep rupture within Christian communities. Families or churches built on cowardice are unsustainable, which is why it was so easy for many to stop attending their church in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Habit and biology are not enough to sustain a communal life together. A healthy life together requires the courage to forge a common life and strive for God’s common good. However, our cowardice has fractured our relationships, replacing them with a cold silence in the home and in the church over issues of culture and politics. Let me show you why I think so.
It is rather common for middle-class American Christians to hold a defeated attitude when it comes to American culture and politics. Many see a story where the social changes of the 1960s ushered in a cultural collapse: the sexual revolution made sexual immorality permissible, Roe v. Wade made abortion a right, divorce laws were eased, morality policies and regulations were not enforced, wicked ways of life became celebrated through Hollywood, President Clinton became a paragon of sexual unfaithfulness and moral disgrace, and eventually, the 2015 nail in the moral coffin, was that homosexual marriage became the law of the land. The political fights drew in Christian political participation for decades. The political power garnered was used by Republicans to enact major economic measures, but was seldom used to address the cultural or existential concerns of American Christians.
It would be a failure on my part not to mention the other Christian story that was growing since 2001. The American Christians a little older than me had witnessed the disgrace of President Clinton in their most formative years of political maturity. They wholeheartedly agreed with Christian leaders that the immorality of President Clinton disqualified him from national leadership. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Christian support for war efforts was quite high, but by the time I had entered adulthood in 2007, young Christians were very uncomfortable with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their perception was that President Bush had not been sexually immoral, but the loss of life enacted by the USA for national interests was evil, too. Both Republicans and Democrats, for different reasons, were immoral: one for their sexual immorality and the other for lack of love for other humans.
This moral ambiguity concerning the political parties led to young American Christians voting for candidate Barack Obama in large enough numbers to counteract their parents’ consistent Republican voting practices. Jonathan Merritt wrote about this political shift of young Christians in the book A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars. Older American Christians attempted to rally against this growing coalition between young Christians and Democrats, but instead of addressing the issue of Republican immorality, they launched the Tea Party Rallies of the 2010 midterm elections. This had some political success since it was a midterm election, but had no cultural effect. Obama’s support among young Christians only grew, leading to an even larger coalition victory for the Democrats in 2012.
President Obama’s attitude changed as he moved into his second term to become more overtly anti-religious. This did not help the growing tension between older and younger American Christians. Obama directed his IRS to begin hunting down the Tea Party organizations that had stood against him during his first term, which were often quasi-religious organizations. He continued to try and force practices of sexual immorality on religious groups under the guise of healthcare. He also publicly changed his stance on gay marriage, leading his administration to eventually help overturn all state constitutions that had banned the practice.
The 2012 defeat was intensely felt by older American Christians and was a turning point in the conversation between the generations. I remember a conversation with a gentleman in my church who said, “I’m done! There’s no point in talking about it. Young people have gotten us into this mess, and you will just have to get yourselves out of it now. I’m old. The future mess is yours.”
Of course, younger Christians had answers to these things. He held that older Christians were conflating their political beliefs with Christianity. Specifically, their economic selfishness, seen in their rejection of healthcare and social services expansions, and the willingness to let other people suffer in war for American interests. Secretly, though, more and more of them were convinced that the charge of sexual immorality against the Democrats was false. Younger Christians increasingly believed homosexual practices and relationships were an expression of human love, which means adoption by these couples would be good for abandoned kids. And since most evangelicals had already accepted contraception as morally neutral for healthcare reasons, then why not abortion for seemingly bad situations of mothers? And, of course, IVF and surrogacy are good for those struggling with infertility, but especially as a way for gay married couples to create a family.
While it was the 2012 re-election of President Obama that silenced the older Christians towards the younger, it was the 2016 support and election of Trump that led to younger Christians becoming silent towards the older generation. Many young Christians (the oldest in their mid-forties!) could not understand how the older Christians who had denounced the immorality of President Clinton in 1998 could support someone so blatantly immoral and unchristian as Donald Trump. Unfortunately for them, the younger a person was the more likely the older generation would see them as irrational and immoral. Young Christians had given up their moral voice by supporting the Democrat party.
Now the Christian silence is pretty obvious once you start thinking about it. Most sermons and conversations never touch particular topics. On topics related to sex, most churches have given up on teachings on divorce, sexual immorality, reproductive technologies, family structure, the larger order of creation, the roles and place of men and women in church life, and abortion. Politics and things on the news are intentionally ignored. The claim is that our separation and silence make us an alternative community from the world. The hope, of course, is that we don’t want to be stained with the world’s sin because even trying to address the world’s sin is dangerous for our relationships.
Simply put: Christian silence at home and in the church is a sign of cowardice. But American Christians are cowards when it comes to cultural and political issues. The greatest example of this cowardice being that we refused to celebrate the resurrection of King Jesus on Easter 2020 because we were scared of death, either for ourselves or others.
This Christian silence between us must be reversed if there is to be any cultural or political hope for the United States. Whether a Christian holds to the idea of the church being an alternative community or if you believe in Christian participation and engagement in the USA political process, both only bring hope to the larger non-Christian society by being a community of believers together.
This American Christian silence at home and in the churches about culture and politics must end. It was particularly strong between generations, but a lot is now changing. Many younger people are now becoming convinced of conservatism, but they need guidance after the failures of the last thirty years. The formerly younger Christians are becoming the older Christians, but not many of them have matured intellectually or in the faith since the Obama presidency. Those who were older Christians are now elderly and preparing for death, learning to let go of control and just wanting to enjoy being with their children and grandchildren.
We should engage these cultural and political transitions, but it begins by talking about where we have been together and teaching the next generation. We should begin by devoting ourselves to talking through these cultural and political issues together at home and in the church. The truth is liberals and progressives are an inherently impotent group who cannot or do not have children. They require corrupting other people’s children to propagate their ideas. The future is in the homes of Christians, particularly conservative ones. We must see our recent failures as American Christians and should devote ourselves to our families and churches. If there is a hope for America, it is not one that is silent on Christian teaching at home and in our churches.
Let me be honest. I’m not a naturally quiet person, but this silence infected me. My relationships with my grandparents, my in-laws, my brother, and my sisters. It shaped the way I felt I could talk to congregations when I preached and taught. I knew to shy away from these uncomfortable topics because no one wanted to talk about these things. It controlled how I talked to mentors, peers, institutions, academic circles, and organizations. I am breaking the silence by talking about the Bible and history again. I am talking about the importance of theology and Christian thinking again. I have begun to reintroduce these topics into our relationships. My own family looks to pray as many mornings together as possible. We have started to study scripture before bed together, slowly and intentionally. We interpret the news together and talk about the enactment of Christian values and virtues in our home, community, city, state, and nation.
I’m not discovering something new. Somewhere thousands of years ago, it was written (Deut 6),
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
“And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.
“You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. You shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the LORD, that it may go well with you, and that you may go in and take possession of the good land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers by thrusting out all your enemies from before you, as the LORD has promised.
“When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.’”
Social media doesn’t count. Going to school with people who support your ideas doesn’t count. Reading books at home or listening to podcasts in your car does not count. Only real, in-person bridging of the relational divides over important topics with family and church family transforms.
We don’t have to be cowards anymore. Break the silence with me.
Common Thought 