Because most Protestantism in America had given itself so unconditionally to the modern vision, Niebuhr believed, it was not in a position to offer any alternative vision at the point when modernity began to show how shallow, deceptive, and dangerous a vision it was.
Stating the point in other language, culture-religion lacks the necessary distance from its host society to be truly responsible in and for that society. It is so much of its world that it has nothing distinctive to bring to its world, only more of the same—undoubtedly in stained-glass accents. In the end, while it may perform a certain pastoral and ritual function among people, Christianity as culture-religion serves more conspicuously those powers that have their own self-enhancing designs upon society: powers that benefit from the status quo and are therefore very glad to support a religion that helps to maintain the status quo.
Now, while culture-religion has a particular application to Christianity in America, it is by no means a new phenomenon. It is just a modern version of the very ancient idea and reality of religious establishment. It is an adaptation of this idea undertaken in more or less democratic societies where decisions about religion cannot be ordered from the top down, as was the case in Europe from Constantine onwards. It describes the kind of establishment that was worked out in this New World setting, a setting that positively rejected and despised the Old World versions of Christian establishment (since most of our pioneer forebears were fleeing precisely from those legal establishments of old Europe), but a setting that at the same time was not ready to entertain the idea of religious disestablishment. With some important exceptions, we seem incapable of entertaining the thought of Christian disestablishment to this very day. The concept of the separation of church and state is perhaps a polite bow in that direction, but it is also very deceptive, because the establishment we fashioned on this continent was never a de jure (legal or formal) one such as an agreement with the state would usually be, but a de facto informal relationship with the culture at large. Maintaining the separation of church and state (which itself often proves to be more rhetorical than real) does little to affect a distinction between Christianity and culture. That distinction can only be maintained at the level of the church’s theology, preaching, and public witness.
Why are we so steadfastly committed to the idea of Christian establishment? Our forebears said no to legal establishment, and we can be glad of that; but why should Christians seek establishment of any kind? Is there anything in the Christian gospel that would lead us in that direction? To the contrary, as Kierkegaard insisted, is there not in the gospel of the cross that which would deny Christians such a comfortable relationship with the world? Yet despite the biblical warnings against it, the notion that Christianity is quite naturally and properly a religion bound to seek some form of establishment—including some special relationship with the policy-making classes and governing institutions, but more important (in democratic societies) the achievement of majority status and people power—this notion is such a hoary one, itself so entrenched in church history and popular Christian imagination that it is terribly hard to displace or even to critique it. After all, it has been around for at least fifteen or sixteen centuries, by far the greater share of Christian history. It is assumed—most Christians in the United States (and many in Canada), I suspect, simply assume—that the very mission of the church is to achieve establishment in some form or other, if only by being able to claim greater numbers than other power groupings; it is also assumed that churches and Christians who do not manifest that aim, or who may even be very critical of it, are simply failing as missional communities. Again and again the great commission of Matthew’s gospel17 is cited to lend biblical weight to the belief that Christianity is positively intended for majority status, that is, for establishment, ergo that something has gone radically wrong when churches experience quantitative losses or an apparent loss of popular support.
Within the past few decades, however, and particularly in the aftermath of the brief and rather disillusioning run on the mainline churches that occurred in the 1950s, more and more people within the once most established churches in North America and elsewhere began to notice some of the flaws of establishment religion. Today significant minorities in all the American and Canadian old-line denominations not only question the role of Christianity as a culture-religion but have sufficiently distanced themselves from the dominant culture so that they are frequently accused by self-declared conservative Christians of betraying both Christianity and their nation. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of contemporary life in North America is that so many Christians in denominations that were until about 1960 the most culturally established of all have given various kinds of indication that they believe Christianity is fundamentally at loggerheads with our way of life. The nearly unanimous protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the part of the once-mainline churches of the United States and Canada is only one indicator of this new situation. I myself have lived long enough to observe my own denomination, the United Church of Canada, morph from being, certainly, the most culturally established Protestant church in Canada to achieving a countrywide reputation for radicalism and conspicuous divergence from the historical norms and counsels of conventional religion in our country. Even persons in these old denominations who lament the passing of social prestige and respectability have, most of them, been caused to wonder whether Christianity may not be—in its essence—something quite different from what it has usually been. As Sallie McFague writes, “Wiggle as we will, most of us North American comfortable mainline Christians know there is probably something wrong with a Christian faith that does not involve a countercultural stance.”18
Perhaps just at this point, however, a parenthesis is required; for the mention of countercultural approaches to Christian faith and mission introduces another question, which critics of the Christian Left do not fail to belabor: Is there not a danger in some ecclesiastical circles that the Christian religion will be uncritically allied with certain countercultural ideologies, identities, and causes? Is it not possible for Christians who are critical of the dominant culture to pursue uncritical identity with counter- or alternative cultures, and is this tendency perhaps just as questionable from the perspective of prophetic faith as the older approach? When the church leaps from association with the establishment to greater solidarity with anti-establishment forces and factions, is it not in danger of seeking legitimization through association with the protesting minority, and thus of manifesting once again the same old lack of courage to stand alone—by faith alone?
It would be wrong, I think, to dismiss this critique out of hand. Sometimes what we may call the habit of establishment manifests itself in quests for proximity to protesting minorities on the part of Christians who are disillusioned with the cultural majority. It is no solution of the dangers of establishment when Christians move from an unexamined conventional identification with established power to an easy endorsement of movements of protest against that power. It may be quite justifiable when the Christian protest aligns itself with other forms of social protest; but it remains true that Christians must always try to be quite clear about their own inherent reasons for protest. That is to say, theological reflection is always required of the church. It is not enough to assume that every cause that announces its espousal of justice, peace, and the integrity of creation can without further ado be embraced by Christians.
One must speak of this openly, for there is a certain danger among ultraliberal or self-consciously radical elements in the once mainline churches that countercultural solidarity with this or that social protest will be thought natural, right, and good without any further theological reflection. The fact of protesting seems in these circles to justify the stance. There is a tendency here, not unconnected with the thrill of protest in itself, to seek Christian authentication through endorsement by popular countercultural causes and identities. As Christians, we have our own reasons for being ecologically, racially, sexually, aesthetically, and in other ways vigilant and involved in today’s changing social scene. We do not have to borrow from others a rationale for environmental stewardship or for concern over marginalized groups or for international economic justice or for world peace. We have an ancient, profound, tried-and-true tradition of ontological and ethical wisdom upon which to draw; and wherever Christian groups have drawn upon that wisdom faithfully and with imagination, they have not only brought an independent voice to the chorus of those who struggle for greater humanity in the earth; they have been welcomed by others
