This week I read an article in a prominent U.S. newspaper about recent divisiveness and conflict at a prominent southern California university of decidedly conservative Christian heritage [1]. The article demonstrated yet again what can happen to sincere Christians when they fail to make the Bible supreme over all cultural imperatives, and when they likewise fail to draw the line between the rightful purview of the faith community and that of the secular state.
The article writes of the growing divide on the campus in question over the 2020 election results, social justice issues such as race and immigration, mask and vaccine mandates relative to the COVID pandemic, the LGBTQ movement, and more [2]. The article insists that many of the university’s students, like young evangelicals elsewhere, believe the church should take a greater interest in problems of social oppression, racial and economic injustice, and environmental exploitation [3].
One found especially interesting the following observations from the dean of the school of theology at this particular university: “Our best hope for the planet is that God’s coming back to reclaim it and to set things right and to heal what had been previously broken” [4]. The article continues with the following observation as to where the current split runs among many contemporary American evangelicals:
For some Christians, the path ahead is simple: Pray, proselytize, and prepare your hearts. For others, fixing and reforming the world can’t wait [5].
From the article’s observations, it appears some have yet to internalize the Biblical teaching that heart-preparation for Jesus’ return includes attention to the material and social needs of our fellow humans (Matt. 25:31-46).
Where “Fixing” and “Reforming” Should Focus
Of course, fixing and reforming the world has been conspicuous on the agenda of conservative evangelicals for the past few decades in the United States, though such reform has focused almost entirely on the legislating of overtly religious and consensual moral options, as distinct from addressing problems of economic inequality, racial injustice, or ethnic hostility in its varied forms. Making prayer an official part of the public school curriculum, restricting private choices relative to sexual intimacy and reproductive issues, the quest to legally forbid marriages not conforming to the Biblical model of one man and one woman—such issues have found themselves prominent on the political docket of Christian conservatives since the rise of the so-called Religious Right in the late 1970s and early ‘80s.
By contrast, the pursuit of racial harmony, the redress of economic disadvantage, and similar issues have generally been conspicuous by their absence from the public agenda of self-proclaimed conservative Christians.
So it isn’t that conservative Christians don’t want to reform the world, and to focus exclusively on issues of personal piety and a heart-relationship with God. Rather, it is issues of social reform—race relations, the immigration controversy, the environment, and other questions involving injustice and social oppression—that seem just now to make a growing number of conservative Christians wonder if this is where their attention and energies also belong.
Utterly Incompatible Bedfellows
The mention by the article in question of Darwinian evolution and how acceptance of the Bible as literally true means rejection of the Darwinian model of origins [6], seems notably ironic in the context of the article’s focus on the growing interest of certain evangelicals—in particular the young—in social justice issues. For indeed, if ever there were two paradigms with absolutely nothing in common, evolution and social justice might well take the prize.
The heart of the theory of evolution is the principle of survival of the fittest, often called natural selection. This principle involves the devouring of the weak by the strong as a means of “bettering” the natural world. When this principle has been applied to human society, the concept of “social Darwinism” has been the result [7], a philosophy which justifies social and economic oppression by society’s upper classes as a means of subjugating the weak and affirming the strong. It was the undergirding of this ideology by the theory of evolution which constrained William Jennings Bryan—a prominent Biblical fundamentalist and thrice the Democratic Party’s nominee for U.S. President—to oppose the teaching of evolution at the famous Scopes Trial of 1925 [##8|Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), pp. 294-295.##].
Today, many cultural and political progressives who embrace and defend the theory of evolution have sadly forgotten the close ties between this theory and the social injustice they lament so loudly.
The Basic Problem
The basic problem at the university in question, and indeed in much of contemporary Christianity, is that of man-made labels and standards and the imperatives their acolytes tend to apply to those adhering to them. Too many seem to be striving to be consistent with the definition of a label—liberal or conservative, for example—than to be faithful to the Word of God. At one point the article in question observes:
“The party line,” said one Biola professor who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity out of concern of reprisal, “is that Jesus died for your sins and to have a personal relationship with Jesus is to have eternal life. Anything else is a distraction. But we think the Gospel is also about bringing healing, restoration, justice and love to a broken world.”
The debate has taken on red and blue hues.
“In some parts of the university, there is a flowering of a more progressive, justice-oriented Christianity,” said a colleague who also asked not to be identified. “In other parts, there is pushback, a fear of a liberal Christianity that strays from Biola’s conservative roots” [9].
It isn’t difficult to see how problems can arise within the parameters of such logic. Are the liberal and conservative labels being defined here in terms of being strict or lenient with the commands of God’s Word? Or are they being defined in harmony with the use of these labels in the context of culture and secular politics? It can’t be stated often enough that the liberal and conservative labels in secular politics are neither siblings nor cousins to the same labels in the realm of Christian theology.
One can, in fact, adhere to a strictly conservative theological view of Scripture while recognizing what some would call the “progressive” imperatives of racial equality and mercy for society’s downtrodden—themes ubiquitous, after all, in both Old and New Testaments. One can also recognize the imperative of protecting the rights and choices of persons who, in a free country where church and state are kept separate, choose to live their intimate lives in a manner other than what Scripture prescribes—as in the case of those choosing to pursue relationships within the LGBT genre.
Moreover, one can honor consensual intimacy of an unscriptural nature in a non-theocratic state while simultaneously forbidding such choices for those choosing to be members of religious communities who adhere to Scripture or other authoritative standards which prohibit such behaviors for those choosing membership in such communities. That’s what the separation of church and state is all about. Such communities have the right to prohibit certain sexual behaviors and relationships for those choosing membership therein as much as they have the right to require affirmation of such beliefs as the supreme authority of the Bible in matters spiritual, the Triune Godhead, the virgin birth of Christ, and the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead.
At the bottom line, the Christian understanding of sexuality is as much a theological doctrine as any of the beliefs noted above. As such, it can be enforced by the church and its institutions for those who willingly choose fellowship therein, but cannot rightly be enforced on citizens of a non-theocratic society like the United States of America.
Christian institutions who adhere to the Bible as their supreme authority cannot allow what the article calls “red and blue lines” (likely a reference to the partisan divide in contemporary America) to define right and wrong. Neither the liberal nor the conservative ideologies in the secular political arena conform in their totality to the will of God as revealed in His Word. The Christian community is obligated to adhere solely to the written counsel of God in its theoretical and practical witness (Isa. 8:20; Acts 17:11; II Tim. 3:16). When other imperatives are allowed to intrude, chaos and divisiveness are the sure result.
Conclusion: The Only Standard That Counts
In sum, the Bible must remain the exclusive standard at an institution like the one noted in the article in question. Regardless of who else might be advocating racial togetherness and justice for the disadvantaged, these are messages found throughout the Sacred Scriptures, and Christians are therefore obligated to proclaim them by word and deed.
The same principle applies to Biblical sexuality. Those who accept the Bible as their supreme authority must embrace Biblical sexuality norms—such as abstinence from any sexual intimacy outside of heterosexual marriage—just as surely as they embrace the Biblical imperative of justice for those of different racial, ethnic, or economic backgrounds. But while condemnation of unscriptural sexuality applies to those adhering or responding to the Biblical message, it cannot in a free society be enforced on those of a differing spiritual worldview. The same Bible that condemns sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage also declares, in the words of Jesus, that heaven’s kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36). Such issues belong solely within the purview of spiritual conversion, and fully outside the purview of civil coercion.
Conservative evangelicalism—and even, to some degree, contemporary Seventh-day Adventism—is confronting the sort of confusion and distractions that can occur when our Lord’s warning against “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:9) is disregarded. No secular political ideology or agenda, no allegiance to a secular political constituency, can be permitted to distract the focus and pervert the principles of God’s kingdom. The Word of God must reign supreme in the agenda and purposes of the church. It is the only standard that counts (Isa. 8:20; Acts 17:11). Where adherence to that Word places the Christian so far as someone else’s abstract ideological continuum is concerned, is not the Christian’s problem.
REFERENCES
1. Thomas Curwen, “CRT, Trumpism and doubt roil Biola University. Is this the future of evangelical Christianity?” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2022 https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-10/crt-trumpism-doubt-roil-biola-university?fs=e&s=cl&fbclid=IwAR2vjGnhVaeK9W49D28y8bCJG8zhGG1DzRj9A5vxrazvmocT34OHPv6SziM
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. “Social Darwinism,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism
8. Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), pp. 294-295.
9. Curwen, “CRT, Trumpism and doubt roil Biola University. Is this the future of evangelical Christianity?” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2022 https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-10/crt-trumpism-doubt-roil-biola-university?fs=e&s=cl&fbclid=IwAR2vjGnhVaeK9W49D28y8bCJG8zhGG1DzRj9A5vxrazvmocT34OHPv6SziM
Pastor Kevin Paulson holds a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Pacific Union College, a Master of Arts in systematic theology from Loma Linda University, and a Master of Divinity from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University. He served the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-day Adventists for ten years as a Bible instructor, evangelist, and local pastor. He writes regularly for Liberty magazine and does script writing for various evangelistic ministries within the denomination. He continues to hold evangelistic and revival meetings throughout the North American Division and beyond, and is a sought-after seminar speaker relative to current issues in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He presently resides in Berrien Springs, Michigan