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If there’s an ideological fault line running through Western culture—one that divides left from right, progressive from conservative—it’s clear this fault line also cuts directly through churches. Pick, at random, two churches to attend this coming Sunday and, depending on where you go, you’re apt to encounter very different versions, or perhaps caricatures, of Jesus.
In some churches you might meet a “conservative Jesus”—a Jesus who isn’t afraid to draw lines in the sand, clearly naming some beliefs false and some behaviors sinful. This Jesus insists that we stop blaming our moral failings on others, demanding instead that we take responsibility for them. In short, he calls us to acknowledge our sins, repent of them, receive him as our Savior and live the rest of our lives— through the power of His Spirit—in holiness, witnessing to others of his mercy. This Jesus values individual responsibility. He also seems to endorse the kind of freedom enshrined in the constitutions of most Western democracies.
But there are still other versions of Jesus to meet. “Progressive Jesus,” rather than drawing lines, erases them, doing away with the exclusionary boundaries that keep some people locked out. Although his embrace is vast enough to encompass all, Progressive Jesus clearly holds a special love for the disenfranchised—the poor and the refugees, the addicted and the mentally ill, along with anyone whose identity lies anywhere along the multicolored spectrum that is human sexuality. Progressive Jesus, though, does have a definition of sin. It is not so much an individual sickness of the human heart, one experienced by every son or daughter of Adam and Eve, but a force infecting whole political, social, and economic systems.
These caricatures of Jesus are just that—caricatures. As such, they fail to account for the theological nuance in the beliefs of actual progressive and conservative Christians. However, tThe fact that these ideologically tainted portraits of Jesus seem so familiar is indicative of a certain truth; namely, that Christians have failed to transcend the culture war that is unfolding in the Western world. Indeed, it could be said that we Christians have broken ranks with one another—our brothers and sisters in Christ—diving into either one or the other opposing ideological trenches. There, we have effectively become chaplains and standard-bearers for our respective battalions, glowering across the cultural no man’s land at our fellow Christians (whom we probably no longer regard as truly Christian at all).
So it’s worth asking: Is it possible for us—both as individual disciples of Jesus and whole church communities—to cultivate an understanding of our Lord and his teachings that remains relatively undistorted by the conflicting political ideologies of our day? My careful but tentative answer is yes. However, it involves nurturing, on both a private and congregational level, certain spiritual disciplines—disciplines which, if practiced diligently, may protect our minds from being captured by the false gospels of our age and from being “blown about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14).
Dialogue with Scripture
“Take care how you listen” (Mark 4:24), our Lord cautioned his disciples. If this was a timely warning in first-century Judea, how much more in the 21st-century West— a noisy world filled with the babble of countless political pundits, talking heads, and thought leaders. Now more than ever, a follower of Christ must be intentional about retreating into silence, listening only to the voice of the Master as he speaks through the Holy Scriptures. This isn’t to say that we must unsubscribe from every political podcaster and vow to never again watch network news. It simply involves giving priority instead to the Word of God, allowing our understanding of sacred Scripture to guide our political views and not the other way around.
Still, we need to avoid a naive and simplistic biblicism (“just my KJV and me”) which assumes we can approach the Word of God with perfect objectivity, never allowing a pre-existing theological framework or ideological bias to distort our understanding of Scripture. Which brings us to our next discipline.
Dialogue with One Another
Many progressive Christians will read the story of the woman caught in adultery and keenly hear the words “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone” (John 8:7) and “Neither do I condemn you” (John 8:11a) but fail to hear the Lord’s equally emphatic “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11b). Many conservative Christians will read the Parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:1-8) and rightly understand it as a summons to faithful and persistent prayer, all the while remaining ignorant of what the Lord is calling us to pray (and presumably struggle) for—justice. Studying the word of God alongside Christians with whom we are apt to disagree serves as a very helpful corrective to our biases—leading us away from potential misreadings of the text while, at the same time, giving us insight into truths that would have otherwise remained opaque to us.
Such dialogue between Christians of differing political persuasions should not take place online in anonymity, in which people can say whatever they wish, without having to face any of the usual social consequences. Rather, these discussions ought to take place face-to-face, in rectory living rooms and church basements, between fellow parishioners who’ve had the chance to form trusting relationships. This would encourage a far more civil and productive conversation. It’s hard, after all, to angrily accuse a person of being a “commie” or a “bigot” if they drove your kids to youth group last week or baked you a rhubarb pie when you were homebound, recovering from gallstone surgery.
Dialogue with the Saints
At the end of C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair, the character Eustace finds himself in conversation with a beloved friend (King Caspian) whom he knows to be dead. He asks Aslan, the Christ-figure, “Hasn’t he—er—died?” To which Aslan replies, “He has died. Most people have, you know. Even I have. There are few who haven’t.”
Like Eustace, we need to get used to the idea of having conversations with the dead including —the saints and martyrs whose prayers rise, even now, like smoke before the face of God in Heaven. To be clear, this is an opportunity for prayerful engagement with their writings—whether the towering theological and spiritual treatises of St. Augustine of Hippo and Catherine of Sienna or the intimate journal entries and autobiographies of Brother Lawrence and Thérèse of Lisieux. As Christians whose lives collectively span centuries, their voices transcend the smallness of our age. Being so removed from our narrow conflicts, they can give us a very different insight into the disagreements that consume us, offering a word of rebuke to both progressive and conservative Christian alike.
It would be particularly helpful to pay heed to the writings of Christians known for rejecting the murderous political ideologies and social movements of their day—dwelling, like the prophet Elijah, alone in the wilderness when all Israel had forsaken the covenant. Here I refer to Christians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who remained loyal to Christ even when most German Christians were swearing fealty to Hitler) and Bartolomé de las Casas (who rejected the conquest of the Americas and the subjugation of its inhabitants by the Spanish crown and other imperial European powers).
Dialogue with the Church Catholic
Chinese Christians who, over the decades, have weathered wave after wave of sporadic, state-sanctioned persecution know what it’s like to follow Jesus as strangers and aliens in a hostile land. They have much to teach American Christians who mourn the days when the United States was a “Christian nation” and churches formed the bedrock of civic society. Nigerian Christians—whose churches are young, energetic and multiplying at an exponential rate despite conditions of extreme poverty—have much to teach Canadian Christians whose churches are aging and declining, even though blessed with abundant wealth. Caribbean Christians, whose ancestors came to faith in Jesus under the thumb of their colonial masters, have much to teach European Christians, whose ancestors did both the converting and colonizing.
In short, the Christians of the Global South (although also wrestling with controversies) are somewhat removed from Western churches’ culture wars. This gives them a unique insight into an ideological conflict that is tearing many of our denominations apart. It would be wise for us, as Western Christians, to open our ears to what the Lord might be speaking through these our brothers and sisters, gleaning some of that insight to our blessing.
By arguing that Christians can and should transcend the culture wars, I’m certainly not suggesting that the church adopt a middle of the road, wishy-washy position on every controversy of our age. In fact, a faithful and genuine engagement with Jesus and his teachings could very well result in us taking a radical stance on various heavily debated issues. However, if these stances truly flow from a gospel ethic, they wouldn’t likely fall (as they so often do now) along standard partisan lines. Instead, they would place the church at odds with people on both sides of the political spectrum—offending progressives one day with a critique of abortion, and offending conservatives on another day with a critique of mass deportations.
Jesus, after all, managed to provoke every sectarian party of his age. He alienated the Sadducees by his proclamation of the resurrection of the dead (Matt. 22:23-33). He insulted the Herodians by his scorn for “that Fox” (Luke 13:32) whom they hailed as ruler. He offended the violent revolutionary sentiments of the zealots (and probably everyone else, too) with his outrageous call to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44). In short, if our “speaking truth to power” only serves to hold some people in power to account, then perhaps we’re not speaking truth at all (or at least not the fullness of it).
Christianity as Ground Zero for the Culture Wars
What if Christians haven’t been merely swept up into a battle between right and left, conservative and progressive? What if Christianity is the very source of our ideological conflict? This is an argument proposed by a classical historian, Tom Holland, who likens the 21st-century culture wars with the Reformation era of the 16th century. Just as the conflict between Catholics and Protestants, and between Protestants and Protestants, unfolded in a Christian culture, so too does today’s conflict between conservatives and progressives—both of whom, according to Holland, draw their worldview from the same biblical source.
If this is true and the current culture wars are indeed being fought within a society that is, in some sense, incurably Christian, then it only makes sense that professing Christians play a role in resolving it. St. Peter wrote that judgment must begin at the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17). It could be argued that reconciliation must begin there too.
The Rev. Terence Chandra is an Anglican priest serving at Stone Church in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. He and his wife (the Rev. Jasmine Chandra) also run Pennies and Sparrows, a non-profit organization that ministers to marginalized people in their community.
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