Inalienable

How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save the American Church

Eric Costanzo, Daniel Yang, Matthew Soerens

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781514003053
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Chiesa cristiana

Outreach Resource of the YearThe American church is at a critical crossroads. Our witness has been compromised, our numbers are down, and our reputation has been sullied, due largely to our own faults and fears. The church's ethnocentrism, consumerism, and syncretism have blurred the lines between discipleship and partisanship.Pastor Eric Costanzo, missiologist Daniel Yang, and nonprofit leader Matthew Soerens find that for the church to return to health, we must decenter ourselves from our American idols and recenter on the undeniable, inalienable core reality of the global, transcultural kingdom of God. Our guides in this process are global Christians and the poor, who offer hope from the margins, and the ancient church, which survived through the ages amid temptations of power and corruption. Their witness points us to refocus on the kingdom of God, the image of God, the Word of God, and the mission of God. The path to the future takes us away from ourselves in unlikely directions. By learning from the global church and marginalized voices, we can return to our roots of being kingdom-focused, loving our neighbor, and giving of ourselves in missional service to the world.

1

WHY THE AMERICAN CHURCH NEEDS SAVING

What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

MATTHEW 16:26

“IT WAS LIKE A FIRE ALARM going off in the church,” reflects Beth Moore, whose Bible studies have influenced tens of millions of Christians. “I’ve never been naive enough to think that evangelicalism didn’t have its problems, but I believed we were a gospel people, that the gospel of Jesus Christ was first and foremost to us.” Instead, she says, recent years have seen the “gospel witness of the church” unravel, as many evangelical Christians in the United States have silently tolerated or openly embraced nationalism, sexism, and racism, “compromising our values for power.”1

Moore is certainly not alone in her soul searching. Many are questioning whether the evangelical commitment to the authority of the Bible as the inspired Word of God has momentarily become—or perhaps has long been—secondary to the pursuit of political power and control. Many outside the church have assumed this for some time, resulting in a significant loss of credibility for the American church. We’ve reached the point that just 9 percent of non-Christians have a positive opinion of evangelicals2—and, though evangelicals represent only a minority of all American Christians, the conflation of “evangelicalism” with “Christianity” in the minds of many non-Christians has meant that the broader church is viewed with skepticism. In other words, it feels like the American church is often repelling people from, rather than drawing them to, Jesus.

For Moore, the “fire alarm” began sounding in 2016 as her fellow evangelicals seemed indifferent to the admissions of sexual immorality by then–presidential candidate Donald Trump—and followed up soon after with their wholehearted endorsement and unwavering embrace even with no sign of his repentance.

For others, it has been the public fall of once-prominent pastors and ministry leaders caught in sins of hypocrisy and even harmful crimes.

For still others, it has been churches and denominations divided over obscure academic theories of systemic racism—while turning a deaf ear to the experiences of Black brothers and sisters, and seemingly being unbothered by their quiet exodus from their fellowships.

Or it has been revelations of sexual abuse within churches, denominations, and Christian ministries and subsequent coverups and shaming of victims, often rationalized by the belief that these institutions were too big—and doing too much good for God—to fail.

Or images of the Christian flag and “Jesus Saves” signs being waved during an insurrection at the US Capitol that included calls to hang the vice president of the United States, the assault of law enforcement officers, and prayers from self-described “patriots . . . that love Christ” who unlawfully invaded the Senate floor.3

Or Christians’ susceptibility to and culpability in internet-fueled conspiracy theories that initially downplayed and then exacerbated a global health crisis, putting their own lives and those of their neighbors at risk.

We could go on. It feels like we’re in a tailspin, like we may have forfeited our soul.

At the root, we believe, are both a theological and a heart problem. Many in the American church have replaced worship of God with idolatrous pursuits of wealth and power, at the cost of our integrity. White evangelicals have become known for ethnocentrism and for stoking fear of those who are different from them. The American church has developed a reputation for being driven by control, comfort, and security, as opposed to being known by love for one another, as Jesus instructed (Jn 13:35). Our political motivations and nationalistic tendencies have created a syncretism that blurs the lines between true discipleship and mere partisanship. As a result, many have come to see the American Christian emphasis on “family values” as nothing more than words, especially when our leaders and churches flagrantly fail to practice what they preach.

To be clear, however, this is not another book about Donald Trump, nor is it about Jerry Falwell Jr., Ravi Zacharias, Mark Driscoll, or others on a long list of high-profile Christians whose abusive leadership or hypocrisy has been exposed in recent years. It’s also not the story of how we got into this mess. In their books that have become bestsellers, historians such as Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes Du Mez have already carefully documented the history of how American Christianity (and particularly White evangelicalism) has been complicit with racism, sexism, and nationalism—essentially White patriarchy masquerading as family values.4

Instead, this book seeks to answer questions such as, Where do we go from here? Can and should the American church be saved? Can American evangelicals revive our public witness, and how?

While we’re uninterested in simply resuscitating a damaged religious brand, we believe—because we have seen it—that God is still at work in the American church, and we want to be a part of restoring her gospel witness. To do so, we’re going to need to learn to listen to voices that have historically been at the margins of American Christianity.

PERCEPTION AND REALITY

Many within our evangelical world consider an increasingly negative reputation among those outside the church as proof that we are doing something right, earning the world’s scorn that Jesus promised his followers (Jn 15:18; 1 Jn 3:13). Though there is a real sense in which the church should not be driven by popular opinion, we are also called to earn the respect of those who may never embrace our convictions. Moreover, they should be unable to ignore our “good deeds,” which ultimately glorify God (Mt 5:16; 1 Pet 2:12). If reputation is indeed part of gospel witness, our witness is in tatters.

When the people of Israel claimed to bear God’s name while simultaneously pursuing idols, God warned through the prophet Ezekiel, “[You have] profaned my holy name” (Ezek 36:20). This is a charge that should chasten us. The reality is that evangelicals are most often despised not because we are Christians, but because of distinctly unchristian attitudes and behaviors. As Russell Moore notes, “The culture often does not reject us because they don’t believe the church’s doctrinal and moral teachings, but because they have evidence that the church doesn’t believe its own doctrinal and moral teachings.”5

If we are actually committed to the work of God’s kingdom, the commissions of Christ, the example of the New Testament church, and a biblical social ethic, we should be driven to care deeply for how others perceive our attitudes and actions. We should be known for our love, compassion, humility, and countercultural blessing of our opponents, earning worldly scorn only for doing what is right, never for what is wrong (1 Pet 3:8-9, 16-17). When we preach an anemic gospel while blatantly dismissing parts of the biblical witness that do not line up with our personal or partisan interests, we don’t just appear to lack self-awareness, but “God’s name is blasphemed” among those outside our faith (Rom 2:24).

We are to do what the apostles and the ancient church modeled: “Be wise in the ways you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity” (Col 4:5). We are also to live lives that evoke questions from those on the outside about what fuels our unique hope—because we revere Jesus Christ as Lord (1 Pet 3:15). Right now, however, our public witness is not evoking questions from outsiders about our hope—fewer than one in ten non-Christians describe evangelicals as “hopeful”6—but rather about how we have come to compromise our stated convictions in so many ways. As the church emulates Christ, we are called to give ourselves “for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51)—but, as Glenn Packiam laments, “It’s hard to be given when the world wants nothing we’re giving.”7

THE SINKING SHIP

Though many American evangelicals fear a looming persecution that might seek to silence the Christian voice in the public square, the reality is we are on the verge of forfeiting it ourselves. Many within our churches are leaving behind the evangelical label—and sometimes Christianity altogether. According to Barna, “The share of practicing Christians has nearly dropped in half since 2000.”8

Likewise, the last decade has seen more young adults leave organized religion than any time before.9 By 2020, less than half of Americans said they were members of any church or other house of worship, down from 70 percent as recently as 1999.10 For a time, evangelicalism was one of the few Christian traditions that had not yet faced steep decline in membership. That no longer seems to be the case.11 Simply put, while many American evangelicals were focused on gaining influence in a few successive political cycles, we may have lost an entire generation, with ripple effects for Christians of other traditions.

Beyond the statistics, though, this is personal for each of us, as we imagine it is for most reading this. We know and love people who have made the decision in recent years to walk away from the Christian faith. Each story is distinct, but many fit the profile of those who became disenchanted by public hypocrisy and failures in the American church, began to deconstruct the faith they had inherited from others, and ultimately decided it was not worth rebuilding. We’re saddened, not because American Christianity is declining in numbers or public influence, but because we still genuinely believe these friends are missing out on the most profound hope possible: Christ and his coming kingdom.

As we watch more believers abandoning their faith and those not within the fold seeming less likely than ever to consider it, we are compelled to act. And we are convinced the most substantial threats to American Christianity are not those from the outside but from within. A story told by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai nearly fifteen hundred years ago illustrates this well:

Men were on a ship. One of them took a drill and started drilling underneath him. The others said to him: What are [you] sitting and doing?! He replied: What do you care[?] Is this not underneath my area that I am drilling?! They said to him: But the water will rise and flood us all on this ship.12

The ship that is American Christianity is filling up with water, in many cases as a result of holes we’ve drilled ourselves. The wounds which continue to weaken our effectiveness are self-inflicted and yet all too visible; nevertheless, many deny the existence of the very attitudes and actions for which we collectively need to repent. The solution, we believe, is to return to the inalienable truths revealed to us in Scripture.

RETURNING TO WHAT IS INALIENABLE

That which is inalienable is essential and undeniable. That word resonates for some Americans because of its role in the Declaration of Independence, where it is used to describe the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”13 That commitment was, at best, what Martin Luther King Jr. described as a “promissory note” to be claimed by future generations of Americans, since it clearly was not applied by the founders to all men (to say nothing of all women) at the time of the nation’s founding.14

Our goal is not to examine what’s admirable or not in the foundation of our nation, but rather the core, inalienable truths about God that we must recover if the American church is to save our sinking ship: his kingdom, image, word, and mission. These truths are at the very center of the biblical narrative.

Drawn from the Latin word alius, meaning “other,” to call something inalienable means that there is no other: what is inalienable has been established by God and therefore cannot be removed or abolished. For example, there is no other God (Ex 20:3) and thus we must reject idolatry—whether of our nation, our security, or our privileged position in society. Additionally, in God’s kingdom, while the beauty of culture and ethnicity remain, there is no “other”—neither Jew nor Gentile; male nor female; citizen nor immigrant; White nor Black, Latina/o, Arab, Asian, nor Indigenous. Instead we “are all one in Christ Jesus” and of equal wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• 1 Why the American Church Needs Saving
• Part 1: The Kingdom of God
• Part 2: The Image of God
• Part 3: The Word of God
• Part 4: The Mission of God
• Conclusion: A Declaration of Dependence
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Name Index
• Scripture Index
• Praise for Inalienable
• About the Authors
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright