Book Review: A Faith Of Our Own

Christians are bad at politics. We always have been. And Jonathan Merritt says we should just give up. In his new book, A Faith Of Our Own, Merritt tackles the tricky relationship between Christianity and politics in America. Merritt's conclusions dovetail with his personal story. A graduate of Liberty University, he was poised to inherit all the perks, traditions, and cultural assumptions of evangelical royalty. His father was president of the Southern Baptist Convention. His book opens with a story about having breakfast with Jerry Falwell.

But for all his conservative Christian heritage, Merritt is something of a political prodigal. He proposes a different way, a new approach to Christian engagement with politics and culture which, it turns out, isn't new at all.

Merritt's thesis is that it's time to abandon the culture wars. Intertwined with stories from his own journey through the subculture of the Moral Majority, Merritt gives several reasons for this:

1. We've Lost
The culture wars are over and Christians have lost. We have failed to persuade both Capitol Hill and Hollywood to embrace Biblical values. We can keep beating the same dead horses or we can see the handwriting on the wall. Culture wars haven't worked. God hasn't moved our nation through them. So it remains for us to ask Him whether this is a test of perseverance or an opportunity to follow Him into something new. Like DC Talk of old, Merritt says God is doing a new thang.

2. Jesus Didn't
This is perhaps the most compelling argument in the book and one that could have used more emphasis, I think. When we examine Jesus' own relationship with his culture and government, we see a different pattern than the one we're used to. Jesus lived under an oppressive government that was intolerant of Judaism (and later Christianity), that refused to embrace any religious faith save for its own secular humanism (worshipping Caesar as god may be the very definition of humanism), and that taxed religious people to fund immoral government programs. Like conservative Christians of the 20th century, Jews of the first century were ready to "take back their nation for God." That's why they were eager for Jesus to seize political power, to assume his place as a political savior. But Jesus refused every opportunity to do so. He consistently chose obscurity and humility over power-grabs. This was, in fact, one of the areas in which Satan tempted him directly.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the wold and their splendor. "All this I will give you," he said.

Merritt's assertion is that Christians have mistakenly bowed to the prince of this world by making the kingdom of God nothing more than a political faction in his worldly system of me-first politics.

3. Disunity
Merritt presents some interesting statistics about Christians on both sides of the political aisle. Thanks to the well-funded and radio-broadcasted voices in evangelical politics, we often think of Christians as exclusively conservative. But Merritt cites sources that show that our brothers on the left can be just as polarizing and just as blindly attached to party. When believers are divided by politics, it elevates matters of governance above matters of the heart. It undermines Jesus command for us to love one another so well that it becomes our touchstone. Merritt argues that when we engage in culture wars we create civil war in the kingdom of God. And a house divided against itself cannot stand.

4. Bad PR
Finally, Merritt argues that Christians have created a negative stereotype for ourselves in the culture, and we only reinforce that stereotype when we fight culture wars. Of course, that's not fair. Not all Christians are gun-toting, war-making, greedy, gay-bashing hate-mongers. No stereotype is fair. But in all our politicking, we have failed to learn the ancient political truism that perception is reality. Just because the vast majority of Christians are kind, generous and compassionate, doesn't mean we don't have to deal with the perception that we are otherwise. To refuse to deal with the stereotype because it's false is to reinforce the stereotype. The wise choice, instead, is to prove it wrong. And we do that best outside the sphere of politics.

Winning hearts to faith in the White House seems like a bigger coup for the kingdom of God than winning hearts to faith under a bridge in South Dallas. But the latter requires more faith. His ways are not our ways.


It's hard to disagree with Merritt's theses, but it's also easy to finish his book without clarity about how to go forward. Should Christians abandon political involvement altogether? Should we even vote? Our primary citizenship is in heaven, but shouldn't we also take seriously our American citizenship? Shouldn't we work for mishpat and shalom in the land of our sojourn?

Merritt's most explicit answer to those questions comes in the form of a quote from one of his mentors:

"As faithful Christians, we may be compelled to enter the political arena from time to time. But we should always be uncomfortable there."

But that's hardly robust enough advice to govern all the ways Christians are to interact with government and culture.


Besides these reasons for abandoning culture wars, Merritt makes several other strong points and addresses a few hot-button issues.

Civility
Merritt argues that Americans are, and have long been, unable to engage in constructive, civil discourse about controversial topics. He asserts that the current state of journalism only feeds this incivility which has become a major obstruction to good governance and a peaceful union, not to mention evangelism.

One of the encouraging things about Merritt's approach is how he handles "Crazy Uncle Harry". Referring to conservative Christian political activists, Merritt quotes Pastor Joel Hunter: "It's like our crazy Uncle Harry got out of the home and ran into city hall wearing a shirt with the family name. We love him, but he misrepresents us."

I've heard this accusation before and it's accurate. But what we have to realize is that it's always accurate for everyone. None of us is comfortable being represented by anyone else, whether in our faith family, our natural family, our political party, or our sports team affiliations. But that's what family is about. We have to learn how to embrace our family members, even when they embarrass us. I may not wear a sandwich board and shout like the street preacher, but I have to be willing to count him a brother and a servant of God on equal footing with me. I have to believe in a family of God big enough for both of us. Merritt seems to be willing to do that with culture warriors.

Constantine
Last year, I read Greg Boyd's book, The Myth Of a Christian Nation. Boyd was even more forceful than Merritt in his warnings not to mix faith and politics. Both authors refer to deep changes that happened in the church when Christianity became intwined with Roman government in the fourth century. What Merritt argues in A Faith Of Our Own is that the culture wars in America may represent our own Constantinian watershed. If the 1950s marked the high point of American civil religion, they may also mark the beginning of the end of true kingdom building.

Gay Marriage and Abortion
Each of these topics gets its own chapter in the book, and Merritt's political positions are easy to decipher. He's a social conservative: Baptist habits die hard. But the point of these chapters is to think about new ways to hold up the virtues of God's moral law. Merritt argues that Christians are awfully good at hating sin; unconvincing when it comes to loving sinners.

We Are America
There's one other principle that Merritt only touches lightly, but that has become my rallying cry in the culture wars: repentance. I believe that every time a Christian decries the evil of our culture, the next sentence out of his mouth should be a prayer of repentance. Because the truth is that if we were doing our job as salt and light, our culture wouldn't be as immoral as it is. Merritt says, "Our major social problems are not the cause of our decadence. They are a reflection of it."

The way to "win America back to God" is not to shout at Americans that they need to repent, or pass laws requiring moral decisions. The way is for the church to lead in repentance. This land is our land; this sorrow must be ours too.