This is our pastor’s article for the April 2016 edition of our congregational newsletter.
A year or so ago, my eyes took in a graph showing the “measure of aggregate religiosity” in the United States over the last 60 years. The chart displayed a whiz-bang of statistics, which used computer algorithms to track a bunch of survey results. Those measurements included scientific studies on worship attendance. They factored in congregational-membership percentages, prayer, and even feelings toward religion. After the statisticians had finished all the number crunching, the results revealed what you may likely know. For you happen to be living in the same, analyzed nation over the last several decades.
What did this measure of aggregate religiosity reveal? Religiosity in the United States is in the throes a “great decline.” What makes this decline seem even sharper is our memories of who we were in the 1950s. In that decade, our religiosity was at an all-time high. More people, as a percentage, attended church than at any other time in our nation’s history. We added “under God” in our pledge of allegiance, highlighting our differences from the atheistic, Communist Soviet Union. Our religiosity, however, started to decline in the early 1960s. Today, the decline continues unabated, even picking up the pace.
What should we make of those statistics? Should we let anxiety overcome us? No way! For the Christian faith is all about being brought into a union with Jesus Christ—and living out such a reality in our everyday lives. We let the light of Christ shine. Our good deeds are to gleam in this world, others experience them, and they praise our Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16). We always stand ready to give an answer to everyone who asks us about the hope within us (1 Peter 3:15).
The Christian faith is a religion, not an agent for direct societal or political change. In other words, the Christian Church, as an organization, is not to influence society. The Church is all about bringing the salvation Jesus earned for us all into the here and now. When the Church loses focus of her God-given tasks, harm comes to both society and the Church. Read a few history books and that truth will reacquaint itself within your mind.
So, if the religiosity of America is declining, does that mean we Christians in North America are to blame, at least in part? Looking back, didn’t a significant proportion of North American churches focus on political causes and movements instead of “preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” as the Apostle Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 2:2)? Even worse, if the people aren’t receiving “Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” they aren’t getting the goods, which Christ commanded His Church to deliver.
Does that mean we shouldn’t care about the nation in which we live? Of course not—but the influence we bring to society and politics is in our vocation as citizens. We are both Christians and US citizens, and so we involve ourselves in both society and church. We vote for candidates who best align with our Christian worldview, even if they are not Christian. Some of us may volunteer to help society and reduce suffering. Some of us may choose to run for a political office, but this takes place as a Christian citizen, not as Church.
When the church is the Church, and the state is the state, when both don’t interfere with the other, we’re all better off. How so? The government doesn’t try to control our consciences. Those who are religious don’t try to make the government an extension of the Church.
No doubt, our society is messed up; yet, the charge Jesus gives to Christians remains unchanged. We do not mobilize the Church to become a political machine. No, for Christ gave His Church her duties: preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments. In our vocation as citizens, however, the faith in our lives should intersect in both society and politics.
So, ready yourself for the coming political season—as a citizen! Amen.
