Why Are Christians Marginal Voices In The Culture?
by George Sarris
Speaker, Actor, Dramatist, and Teacher
World's Greatest Bible Storyteller
www.worldsgreateststories.com

“Why have Christians been so ineffective in affecting the culture for the past forty years?”

During the forty-year time period from the mid-1960s to the present, the values of our American society strayed further and further away from Biblical standards at an ever more rapid pace, while the efforts by Christians to impact the society have been generally ineffective.

Today, we have mega-churches with attendances numbering in the thousands. We have large ministries with multi-million-dollar budgets. We have held seminars, crusades, concerts and large arena events where thousands of people assemble to hear wonderful preachers, teachers, and entertainers. However, while we have grown in numbers, our influence on basic cultural values have continued to wane to the point where the church’s voice is now viewed as either marginal, or even irrelevant.

In much of American culture today, there is rampant immorality. There is rampant abuse. There is rampant violence. There is a headlong quest for wealth. There is a headlong quest for power. There is a headlong quest for sensual pleasure. Worldliness has crept into churches to such an extent that it is often difficult to distinguish the difference between Christian and non-Christian youth. Our words say that we're committed to Godly standards, but our actions communicate a very different message.

The slide really began in the 1920s with the Fundamentalist/Modernist Controversy. There was a major split within Christendom at the time. The Modernists favored a “social Gospel” where they were concerned with helping people in need, but turned away from the historic issues of salvation by grace through faith. The Fundamentalists reacted by focusing on the historic issues of Biblical faith, but withdrew from activities that had their focus on helping people.

The Fundamentalists were Godly people who desired deeply to be faithful to God and the tenets of their faith. However, the net effect of their decision to emphasize faith issues to the exclusion of social issues was that they withdrew from the culture around them.

In the 1950s, their decision to focus on “faith only” issues led them to be on the wrong side of the defining moral issue of the day. They did not see God’s heart as it related to the injustice associated with segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. They were silent, when they should have been vocal. Most of the religious people that were involved in the Civil Rights movement were from the liberal, mainline churches, or Jewish, like Joe Lieberman. The fundamentalist churches weren't involved.

When the abortion issue hit in the early 1970s, the evangelicals were again unprepared. When one major spokesman for the evangelical church was asked why he did not speak out against abortion, his response was, “I speak out against sin, not against sins.” Again, we were silent, when we should have been vocal. The evangelical community was basically out of touch with the world around them because they had withdrawn from actually engaging the culture.

The apostle John talks about being "in" the world, but not "of" the world. The liberal or "modernist" is in the world, but also of the world. The evangelical/fundamentalists is not of the world, but also not in the world.

God certainly wants us to focus on our vertical relationship with Him. But, He also wants us to be alert to our horizontal relationship with the people around us. The two great commandments go together--we are to love God with all our hearts, and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we forget the latter, we become “so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.”

George Sarris will be a speaker at the NYC/Long Island LEAH Convention on May 2 and 3. Come meet with him and enjoy his presentations.