"daring to discuss the important and the amusing"

NEWSLETTER #9

SUMMER 2002

American Christians have had a strange--and interesting--relationship to politics and culture throughout the 20th century. Regarding politics, liberal Christians criticized conservative Christians throughout much of the century for their full-scale retreat from public life. When conservatives took up political activism in the 1970's, their triumphalism made many liberals regret the invitation. Whether through activism or disengagement, conservative Christians have emphasized their distinctiveness from the non-Christian world. Liberals, on the other hand, often have sought common ground to a fault, leading conservatives to criticize their easy appropriation of seemingly secular political programs.

Regarding culture, conservatives often have been reluctant to affirm the value of art, music, literature and leisure that serve no apparent redemptive purpose. Liberals, by contrast, have often so embraced secular cultural expressions as to divorce aesthetics from ethics, in effect denying sin and thereby rendering redemption irrelevant. As with politics, then, conservatives generally have practiced either an oppositional or an instrumental aesthetic, and liberals a syncretistic aesthetic. In short, Christian engagement with politics and culture has too often been characterized by retreat, triumphalism, or accommodation.

As always, the bad news is occasion for good. Not only have there been some excellent recent contributions to Christian thinking about politics and culture, but the Christian tradition has rich theological resources to assist with this project.

Take, for example, the doctrine of common grace. While saving grace is the familiar doctrine that God extends salvation only to those who trust Christ and not to all persons, common grace is the less familiar doctrine that there does exist "a non-salvific attitude of divine favor toward all persons." In the words of Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper, "there is a particular grace which works Salvation, and also a common grace by which God, maintaining the life of the world, relaxes the curse which rests upon it, arrests its process of corruption, and thus allows the untrammelled development of our life in which to glorify Himself as Creator." As Jesus said, God causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

Common grace and its implications for cultural understanding and practice is the topic of Fuller Seminary president Richard J. Mouw's recent book He Shines in All That's Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eerdman's, 2001). Drawing on Kuyper among others, Mouw suggests that the benefits of common grace theology are several. By explaining how unredeemed persons can do good works (i.e., by the grace of God), this doctrine contributes to a balanced perspective on just how much Christians share in common with others. Whereas saving grace taken alone overemphasizes the distinctiveness of Christians to the exclusion of our common heritage in creation, and common grace taken alone overemphasizes the commonality that Christians share with others to the exclusion of that which sets Christians apart, saving grace and common grace taken together contribute to a balanced theological worldview that values all creation--including unredeemed creation--without denying sin or devaluing redemption. In an era of fragmenting identity politics, a balanced theology of commonness that provides a sound biblical basis for true dialogue may be not only an effective Christian witness, but also a positive civic contribution.

That is not all. Common grace also gives Christians a framework for engaging with politics and culture. God works through art and civil society, and therefore so too should we. Regarding Christian scholarship, we should indeed expect to find public standards of scholarship that can be shared by Christian and secularist alike, by nature of the reason we share in common. (The unfortunate view that Christians have nothing to learn from non-Christians is thus ultimately a theological error.) In the words of one theologian, "Common grace supplies the believer with the material for fulfilling his calling to be culturally formative and to fight the battle of the Lord in the world of culture. The sphere of common grace is the area where Christian scholarship, Christian politics, Christian social action and individual Christian activity are to be developed. Common grace is the presupposition of the possibility of Christian cultural activity."

Politics and culture will be the themes of our next two events at Chesterton House, where part of our stated purpose is to encourage cultural engagement that "avoids the pitfalls of retreat, accommodation, and triumphalism." On Saturday, September 21st, we welcome Andy and Catherine Crouch, who will speak on postmodernism and science. Andy is senior editor of re:generation quarterly, a lively publication of reviews and original reflections that takes seriously "the primacy of cultural engagement," and "the comprehensive relevance of the Gospel to every area of nature and culture." Catherine is a postdoctoral physicist at Harvard who has made helpful contributions on the topic of Christianity and science (see below). Andy will also give a lecture on Friday, September 20th, entitled "What I Wish I Knew the Summer Before My Freshman Year."

On Saturday, October 26th, we will be privileged to host Dr. Jim Skillen, President of the Center for Public Justice. Skillen, who writes in the tradition of Kuyper, is a political theorist, activist, and educator, who has devoted his professional life to practicing and promoting theologically informed political involvement and advocacy, including what he calls "principled pluralism." On the general topic of Christian involvement in politics, there is perhaps nobody better.

I highly recommend these talks to anyone who longs for a more subtle and nuanced treatment of Christianity's relationship to politics and culture, and also to skeptics who remain convinced that thinking Christianly is an oxymoron. Thinkers like these suggest that Christian engagement with politics and culture may be more interesting--and less strange--in the new century than in the last.

Below you will find more information on our calendar of fall events, and several other brief announcements. We appreciate your interest in Chesterton House, and hope that we will see you soon.

-Karl E. Johnson

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