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Beyond Culture Wars: Is America a Mission Field or Battlefield?

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Although I read 50-100 books a year, this is one of the strongest books I've read in recent years. Rather than trying to "prove" the case, I want to list some information about the book, then some quotes from it, and let you decide for yourself. I do think, however, that it is a balanced book. It doesn't say "don't get involved in 'worldly' disputes," but "don't lose the church's focus from Christ to politics or other secondary issues."

Thesis: Modern Christendom's fascination with politics (public morality), pop-psychology, and marketing-secular methods-comes at the expense of orthodoxy, spirituality, and our witness. The church needs to return to the Gospel and doctrine, to deal with our own sins first, to look at the church before we condemn the culture.

According to Horton, the book was written because: "The church is no longer pursuing its authentic mission, generally speaking, and ministers are supposed to ring the bell when that happens."

Politically, we have become "one more minority group demanding its rights." Spiritually, "we have made it clear that we do not stand in the tradition founded by our Lord, the `friend of sinners.' " Culturally, our hostile rhetoric has brought us to the point that "our involvement is purely negative."

Horton identifies as his thesis: "Theology, not morality, is the first business on the church's agenda of reform, and the church, not society, is the first target of divine criticism."

Quotes:
--Have we made a compelling case? Are the pagans even aware of what they are rejecting? What separates evangelicals from the world today very often is not doctrine . . . but style, extrabiblical codes of behavior, lingo, and in-house spirituality.

--If "Judeo-Christian" means not handing out condoms, it is reduced to the trivial and, ironically, anything meaningful it may have to say about condom distribution is disregarded because it is not taken seriously. Christianity is a religion, a theological confession first and a moral system only secondarily.

--It is time for judgment to begin in God's house and God's invitation to peace and forgiveness to be extended to the world. As it is, the order is reversed. . . . We must put our own houses in order, so that the offense is in the message and not in the messengers.

--We ought not to be surprised that everything is being questioned in the realm of morality, since there is no longer any theological infrastructure undergirding it. Liberals attacked orthodox theology, while conservatives largely ignored it, so what more could we expect? This generation is simply riding on fumes. We cannot expect people to accept Christian morality if they are not at least intellectually persuaded by Christian truth.

--Those who do not know what it is that shapes the worldview of their time and place will not be able to resist its lies.

--We are offensive for all the wrong reasons while we remove the offense of the cross. Those who are committed to immoral lifestyles will not give us a hearing for the Gospel-not because of the Gospel itself, but because we have made it clear that we do not stand in the tradition founded by our Lord, the "friend of sinners."

--The glory has left the church because the Gospel has left the church-or has been dismissed. It is not because God has been "ejected" from the public schools, but because His name, His kingdom, His power, and His glory have been replaced with our own agendas, priorities, goals, and self-glorifying interests in the church.

--We cannot preach that Americans are basically good people who need a moral environment, that self-esteem and self-fulfillment are legitimate Christian obsessions, and a host of other modern heresies and then condemn "secularism."

--We must recover the art of persuasion. The reason that America is so secularized today is not because of public policy, but because of public belief. We must win arguments, not just cases. We must be willing and ready to give an answer as never before, and this means we will have to become better listeners-humbler and more (dare I use this much-abused term?) tolerant of other people's points of view. We do not have to agree, but we do have to understand; otherwise, there can be no persuasion.

--Ironically, we rail against religious pluralism while we push for prayer in the schools, no matter the religion or object of faith . . . evangelical Christianity has just become one more voting bloc asserting its political rights, along with other special interest groups. Unlike the early Christians, who grounded their mission in specific truth claims, we argue for dominance on the basis of (a) seniority (i.e., the precedent of the founding fathers) and (b) pragmatism (i.e., the moral and civic usefulness of Christian morality). . . . We should follow the example of those first Christians by arguing our case, not as a program of moral improvement or national salvation, but as the truth about God and humanity.

Horton certainly is well-read and knows from whence he speaks. The church is not into culture wars, but in the proclamation of the Gospel. This admonition challenges the church to be the church, to be about its Father's business and will here on earth: "We have turned the one true God of history and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ into a tribal deity of the American experience -- we who are supposed to be the guardians of absolute truth." He so righty puts forward the message that spiritual warfare is what is at hand and gives frank suggestions for turning towards the real battlefront. Only the Calvinistic leaning towards soverignty rather the cross of Christ detracted from an outstanding, bold message.

Horton, professor at California's Westminster Seminary, prefaces this provocative volume with these words: "This book is not going to take sides in the "culture war" (i.e. between "liberals" and "conservatives"), not because I do not have an interest in such things, but because the church is no longer pursuing its authentic mission, generally speaking, and ministers are supposed to ring the bell when that happens. As we shall see...the greatest issues of the day do not have to do with whether one is politically left or right of center. The real division is between those, on the one hand, who believe that revelation, salvation, and the kingdom of God come down from heaven as the sovereign intervention of God breaking into human history and, on the other hand, those who assume that we can save ourselves (either as individuals or as a nation) and bring in the kingdom of God by our own works of righteousness."

If there are prophets today Dr. Horton is one. His book is not for the faint hearted or the intellectually lazy. He knows Theology and the Bible and clearly shows us how Christain are in danger of loosing the message, because of our false concepts about the truth and our creation of "Christian Gettos". He helps us rediscover the Gospel, how we should view the world and how to relate the Gospel to it. And in so doing pulls down the walls of hostility so many Christians have with the world. Hopefully ending this "Cultural War" and takes us "Beyond Cultural Wars". The reader will end up better equiped to fulfill the Great Commision. This is a great book that will change us.

The liberals and main stream media love the attack that Horton lays on the Christian right.
It is my concern that Horton's main point is criticizing the religious right and that Christians are not doing enough to fight social evils.
He is a critic, because Jerry Falwell does not do enough about social justice in Africa. Yet, in Horton's book, he says that Jerry Falwell should not be politically active. So either way, Falwell loses and receives Horton's criticizing comments. Horton lacks discernment when he praises Bishop Tutu who is very liberal and does not believe in the fundamentals of scripture. So Horton's point is to criticize those trying to do something about abortion and say they need to clean up their personal act more. Okay, we all need to do that, but Horton fails to every offer a solution to stop the shedding of innocent blood of abortion. To follow Horton's advice the Christians should stop being the salt of the earth and keep their religion inside the church.
If you follow liberal thinking and neo-evangelical theology, Horton gives you the justification you need to logicality find fault with the religious right.

Horton points out that evangelicalism has bought too much into the presuppositions of American culture to be effective at changing it. Unfortunately, Horton's solution is...ta da...more of the same. Horton believes that Christianity needs reforming by returning to reformation principles in the churches, but does not propose that those principles have any relevance for political action. The result is that he has left evangelicals with precious little in terms of explicitly Christian principles for any activities taking place outside of the institutional church. For those activities, he proposes "natural law," a witches' brew supposedly based upon a "universal divine mandate imprinted on humanity's conscience," which, in the absence of specific mandates from the Scriptures, collapses into whatever pragmatic pottage one wishes to glean from one's sinful conscience. Thus, in place of secular power trips by evangelicals, his principles lead to ... more secular power trips. Furthermore, frankly, the book has no index, making finding specific treatments frustrating, and the book's layout is confusing. Other than that, I loved it... If you want a book about "Explicitly Christian Politics," do a search under that title in Amazon.com.

I picked this book out of my father's library while visiting my mother last week and was surprised to find myself so interested, not just in what my father was reading in the last years of his life, but in the content of the book itself. The author, Michael S. Horton, heads an organization called CURE -- Christians United for Reformation.
This book is not about homosexuality, per se, but hardly any popular work of Christian thought these days can avoid a gratuitous judgment, and Michael S. Horton contributes a declaration that homosexuality is "abominable." I have no trouble at all with Michael S. Horton, or anyone else so inclined, declaring that homosexuality is abominable. But I am unhappy with Horton advocating that homosexuals be punished with four years at hard labor, as seen fit by the Revised Statutes of the people of Louisiana. On the other hand, I do find raisin and carrot salad abominable and think there ought to be a way of putting all those orange-lipped people at the Picadilly Cafeterias in a prison farm for four years. Yuk! But what really renews my sense of amazement is Horton's reminder that God Himself finds homosexuality to be abominable. Now, think about that a minute. How would God know? I mean, He's never supposed to have had sex. You can say He knows everything, but this kind of knowledge would be a bit voyeuristic, wouldn't it? Sort of the nasty God revealed by William Blake. (Yes, wags, I love carrot sticks!) To be fair, Michael S. Horton no doubt has an air-tight rejoinder to such a leaky mind as mine, but if so, he should have addressed homosexuality in a more substantive way, since he brought the subject up.
This leads me to the key weakness of the book. Michael S. Horton is guilty of the amateurism he himself criticizes. He follows John Calvin in declaring that one of the things that's so wrong with the world is that people stick their noses into places where they have no business. He emphasizes this. Michael S. Horton is supposed to be writing about Reformed theology. Bravo. He then comes out of left field with a declaration about the adverse consequences of the US national debt on the next generation, who will be burdened with a great liability. Here comes a doctor of absolute truth, medling in politics, a dimension of life that perpetually can be stated otherwise. Why not say that the next generation will get the great liability as well as the great ASSET of the national debt, the chief effect of which is to limit government, rebate some cash to those who pay most of the taxes, and help the rich get richer? It would take a while to explain what I mean about the national debt. My point is that Horton wallows in debatable subjects beyond his presumed expertise while scolding those who do likewise.
Nevertheless, I give this book a positive rating because it chides the Christian Right. The book does so on terms within it's own perspective, of course (i.e. the American God of the public square is a false "unknown god" of civic religion, not the true God of the Reformed theological faith.) ...