Jackals Among Ruins

I delivered this address on August 26, 2008 to the 2008 Convocation of Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, North Carolina. As I was preparing it, an article was appearing in First Things: "The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline" by Joseph Bottum. In it, Mr. Bottum, the editor of First Things, outlined what he saw as the death of (mainline) Protestantism in our country. Moreover he accurately, in my opinion, showed how the Protestant Church stood on three legs: religion, democracy and capitalism.

With the collapse of the Protestant Church as we have known it, those three American ideas are now in jeopardy. I cannot argue with him. As much as some evangelicals might be tempted to disregard the article and say, “Well, good. The old liberal horse is finally dead,” I think that would be a foolish response. Why? Because just as the Church of England, in the 17th century, held together the extremes by creating a stable middle, so American Protestantism, at its height in the 1930s and perhaps 40s, held together the polarized parts of our religious landscape. As Diggers and Levellers and Ranters emerged from the disintegration of the 17th century Church of England, so we can expect similar things to happen again.

In the midst of this I would say that we evangelicals, the new Presbyterians and Methodists and Anglicans and Baptists and Congregationalists and other re-formed Protestants, have a glorious opportunity to bring the gospel to this nation, even in the apparent ruin and ruble of an old mainline now dead. For just as the early Church brought Christ to the pluralistic landscape of its day and prevailed, so can we, by God’s grace. And just as the Irish monks held together the old culture of literature and democracy in the fall of Rome, and became a human bridge over the competing, less powers seeking to fill the vacuum of a Rome-that-was-no-more, to create a new Christendom, so we must lay down our lives and our years and our gifts to do the same. But how?

In the Convocation message yesterday, I sought to warn, from God’s Word and from a historical-theological case study, how we could miss this unique, sovereignly given opportunity by becoming like the roaming false prophets of exiled Israel (and indeed I would say that this is exactly how the mainline “Protestantism died” in America), who preached out of their own spirits, rather than out of God’s Word. Finally, from 1 Timothy I seek to show how we can focus on the main things, avoid the wrong things, and bring about the supernatural goals of the Kingdom of Christ through, only, the supernatural means of Christ and His Word.

I humbly offer this Convocation address as another voice in the wilderness, if not a voice amidst the dirges sung over “The Death of Protestant America.”

Introduction to the Reading of the Scripture

In the days following Sept. 11 a sinister and quiet killer unmercifully gripped our nation already in shock by acts of terror committed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Traces of deadly poison began to show up in the most conspicuous places in the nation: in newsrooms, at the office of a television anchorman and even in the Capitol of our nation. A quiet killer was on the loose.