War and Apppeasement
We are in a world at war, but for those who follow Christ, we must not wage war as the world does. Our war is spiritual, and our foes are not our fellow man. But, in a society whose strongholds are ruled by a secular and increasingly post- and anti-Christian elite, Christians face an inescapable choice: go against the flow and be relegated to the eddies and backwaters of the culture, or go along and be tolerated in the mainstream. Faced with this dilemma, and averse to conflict, the choice that many evangelical leaders and laymen have made is to lay down their arms and seek peace through appeasement. Silent, if not swayed, in the face of anti-Christian policies and principles, they spend their powder trying to get their brothers and sisters in Christ to fall in line, that is, to conform to the pattern of this world.
Exasperated at this acquiescence and the capitulation of their Christian leaders, many on the religious right have become all too willing to wage war as the world does, to seize the sword of the state and to use it to enforce not merely public order but an officially Christian state. We must not fight the war as the world does, succumbing to a politics of division, selfishness, coercion, brutality, vulgarity, or dishonesty. This too is a grave error. Here I will focus on the appeasers and accommodationists, because I reckon that if they rejoin the good fight, those without scruples who aren’t willing to overcome evil only with good will be marginalized as more godly leaders come to the fore.
It is undeniably true that the relationship of the Christian and of the Church to the kingdoms of this world is a balancing act. Followers of Christ are first and foremost citizens of the Kingdom of God. We are also citizens and subjects of many kinds of government systems around the world that each pose their own unique challenges. The questions for a Christian living under Sharia in Afghanistan or neo-Communism in China are very different than for one living in a post-Christian Western democracy. Ever since Jesus gathered his first followers, Christians have struggled to understand what is owed to Caesar, and what is entailed by being in the world, but not of it.
The Apostle Paul addressed matters of civil authority in numerous contexts. Augustine of Hippo famously wrote about the City of God and the City of Man. Pope Gelasius I wrote about the “two swords” — spiritual authority (the church) and temporal authority (the state). In the Reformed tradition, Luther, Calvin, Bavinck, and Kuyper each spoke to this tension in their time. More recently, Reinhold Neibuhr, Richard John Neuhaus, and Chuck Colson have each laid out their terms of engagement. This is all to say, grace and latitude ought to be extended to fellow Christians as they weigh the many biblical principles and prudential considerations involved in living under two authorities at once. Nevertheless, working directly from the biblical texts, I want to confront two errors: the weary eagerness for peace, at all costs, and the willingness to fight, no holds barred.
As I will argue, the nature of the spiritual war to which Christians are enjoined is significantly intellectual and moral. Some of the key texts emphasize this: the armor of God includes “the belt of truth”, and we are told to “take every thought captive.” And
Peace Through Appeasement
Below I aim to show that the longing for peace and acceptance is a self-conscious and explicitly named motivation for many within evangelical leadership. Specifically, in science, in ethics, and in philosophy, this desire makes one prone to compromise and capitulation.
Peaceful Scientists
Because it challenges one of the fundamental orthodoxies of our secular mythology, submission to the thesis that we are the product of undirected evolutionary processes is one of the primary terms of surrender in the sciences. Creationists and Intelligent Design theorists, who have not bowed to the neo-Darwinian controlling idea, have been mocked and fired at universities and barred from science journals and news aggregators like Apple News.
Seeking peace, others have sketched out positions that avoid disagreement with the reigning evolutionary paradigm. For example, Joshua Swamidass’ online magazine and forum Peaceful Science self-consciously seeks a truce and to be tolerated by acceding to the current orthodoxy of evolutionary science. But the title banner and odes to peaceful engagement notwithstanding, Peaceful Science has not treated less conformant voices in the origins debate with conciliation. Not so peaceful.
In the same spirit, Biologos displays a white dove of peace in its logo. Biologos is the standard bearer for evangelical rapprochement with the scientific establishment. Its founder, Francis Collins is the much celebrated — who reached the heights of the scientific power as Director of the National Institute for Health (NIH), potentially wielding great influence for good as the dispenser of billions in research grants. But rather than being a conscience to modern science, Biologos makes every effort to ensure that Evangelicals don’t get sideways of mainstream science and bioethics. Most recently, they’ve been cheerleaders for establishment science, spreading the good news to fellow Christians that “Science is Good!”
Previously, Darrel R. Falk, former president of Biologos, titled his book Coming to Peace with Science. Biologos shares anecdotes of believers who have made peace with science by accepting the standard view of human and animal origins. Addressing the open hostility from the “New Atheist” movement, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney write at the Biologos blog
The common ground, instead, must be science in its broadest sense — a shared body of facts we can all agree about, however we may differ about the spiritual. Yet this common ground itself is at risk if we let science and faith be in conflict. … the vast majority of Americas want nothing to do with this conflict. They want compromise, and compatibility.
This framing is due in part to what historians of science call the warfare thesis: as two potentially dueling sources of truth and authority, science and religion are inherently in conflict. This idea, popularized by post-Enlightenment propagandists like Andrew Dickson White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.
Peaceful Philosophers
Jesus calls us to take up our cross and wage peace in a culture of unrighteous anger. Mike Austin
Peaceful Leaders
Historically, the National Association of Evangelicals had served as an ironic but counter-cultural voice on behalf of many evangelical Christians.
you feel the tension? Maybe it’s at the dinner table or in your church or anytime you hop on social media. Hosted by Walter Kim, the Difficult Conversations podcast series is an exploration of why we ended up so polarized and how Christians can become the peacemakers that Jesus called blessed.
The Case for (Spiritual) War
It is to be expected that the spirit of the times will be at odds with the Spirit of God. The calling for the Christian is spiritual war. Culture war is just a euphemism for spiritual war.
Ours is not unlike the situation faced by Frenchmen after the Battle of France. Whether under the military’s complete control in the north and west of France, or with nominal independence under the Vichy government in the south, the price of peace was submission.
Total War
For many churches, the flag of surrender has not been white, but every color of the rainbow.
