What is an American Christian?

In the evangelical blender, I might whirl together the following ingredients:  a Colorado Springs address, a WWJD bracelet, a degree from a prominent Christian university, a library of evangelical books-of-the-moment, a Republican voting record, and memories of making out at church camp. But wait: which part of the phrase is reflected the most in this grocery list—American or Christian?  

For many, the American Christian experience is more in line with the American Dream–a cultural/spiritual smoothie designed to make us feel happy and self-actualized. If you haven’t noticed, the church in America is changing, and the older generation is certainly feeling the burn.

As a result, you’ve heard the argument before that Americans are out-of-touch with New Testament Christianity, enjoying their SUV’s and Starbucks while the world is dying. We lament the church’s lack of social action, and we get jaded about the Christian music industry which hands out sparkly awards to chic nominees like all the other entertainment communities. We’ve heard sermons on both American softness and American hardness—comfortable freedoms that make us spiritually limp, and intellectual arrogance that makes us spiritually rigid.  

I doubt you need to be convinced of our country’s spiritual flaws. And yet there is some danger in simply lamenting the American church’s slippery decline into cultural “relevance.” We may say that the church is beginning to feel unfamiliar as we’ve moved into a youth-driven arena of podcasts, Saturday night church meetings, and online fellowship, and we are eager to label certain practices as either spiritually superficial or dishonest to the cross of Christ.

But if God’s sovereignty has ordained me to have American citizenship in this time in history, then he is not asking me to live out my faith in some culturally manipulated time and place. We are not asked to be supernatural time travelers, whisked back to Ephesus or Philippi in order to really understand God’s principles. Does it matter that I use a zippy-fast computer rather than papyrus scrolls? Is it okay that my pastor doesn’t wear a toga when he preaches?

So let’s just admit that we all live out our faith in a God-designed time and place. Those places often feel radically different from each other. Consider an experience I had watching 150 baby boomer Presbyterians eagerly trying to dance with an East African worship team recently at a church-sponsored concert. I was pleased with the open and enthusiastic reception that our older members extended to these international guests. It seems as long as the cultural fingerprints take the form of another country’s expressions, then we are gracious and enthusiastic. But place those same Presbyterians in front of a modern Christian rap concert, then suddenly the comment box is flooded with complaints.

Equally ironic might be the reaction I observed from a Christian college group traveling to Europe. In beautiful old cathedrals, flooded with the novelty of an unfamiliar experience, the travelers were moved by the quiet dignity and sacred aura of their new surroundings. Yet if they had been in their grandmother’s home church with Sister Agnes at the organ, they might be rolling their eyes at the “old people who just don’t get it.”

I guess we’re all guilty.

If we believe that certain cultural traits are spiritually superior to our present age and circumstance, then there might be no limit in what styles we chase. Okay, we’re starting a church . . . what kind should we make? Why not re-create a drum-driven African service in our American churches? Why not choose an underground meeting in persecuted China over an ultra-cool youth center in Orange County?  Surely the sacred hymns of 18^th century England are more spiritual than Vacation Bible School’s rap tunes, right? But despite our longing for some perfect geography, God has granted us specific citizenship, and its cultural fingerprints are part of his plan for us.

The tension that exists between so-called relevant churches and time-warp churches seems to reflect the natural transition from one generation to the next. Like puberty, transitions make us nervous. The irony of every generational conflict is that the old school was at one time, quite literally, a fabulous and inventive experiment. George Whitfield’s motivational, open-air evangelism and Jonathan Edwards’s sober-minded sermons influenced their communities with radical new methods of preaching. Phoebe Palmer—an associate of D. L. Moody’s in the 1800’s—promoted the sometimes stifled contributions of gifted women at a time when feminism had not been introduced to the world, no less the church. When James Dobson began his radio programs so many years ago, the evangelical community was inspired by the effect mass media had on our everyday covenants with spouses and children.  The thread that connects the Christian church from its beginnings is not made of style but of substance. The bickering seems more than a little ungracious.

If such talk gives the emergent church a free pass, then for heaven’s sake, I must extend the same courtesy to the old-timers. For every church board meeting that criticizes the marketing methods of the funky young church down the street, there are just as many arrogant young pastors thumbing their noses at the out-of-touch geezers who still use pulpits and overhead projectors. Young folks love to point out that “Jesus was the most culturally relevant of all, so get over your old-fashioned self.” But a lifetime is long, and what is culturally relevant to twenty-three year old Megan may be incomprehensible to her grandmother. We know that new thinking feels smart and fresh.  It may clear the air of that musty smell from a hundred old sanctuaries. But new thinking can also disregard the dignity of those who are still longing to meet with God in a comfortable, well-worn place.

Style isn’t supposed to matter—until you find one you don’t like. Like those Gnostics who wished we were all spirit and no body, we sometimes wish that we could be only Christians rather than American Christians. No fill-in-the-blank. No potlucks or push-pin missionary maps or elder boards.  No blogs or laser light shows or church day care. No cultural norms at all. But the human race connects to this life in cultural ways even while our spirits search for God. It’s the part of the design that we cannot ignore.

I resist the urge to label all “relevant” churches as experience-driven, doctrinally soft corporations. I also resist the urge to label all traditionalist churches as out-of-touch and doctrinally rigid. So what are some better measuring sticks? How do we know if our method has outrun the doctrine?

One question to ask is whether the method has become a dangerous metaphor for the doctrine itself.  For example, if the regular method of Sunday School is to take a Bible passage and have everyone discuss his own feelings about it, this is not about cultural relevance at all, but slippery biblical interpretation. If our sermons betray a chronic addiction to psychology as man’s best hope for spiritual regeneration, this is not about cultural relevance but doctrinal error.

The traditionalists’ methods can be just as misleading. If we insist on certain instruments or styles of music, we are flatly ignoring the Bible’s teaching about worship. If we can only design one building or one model of evangelism, then we are indirectly fostering pride and elitism. Style is the servant of substance, and when it works the other way, we are doomed in the essentials.

An interesting thing about worshipping style over substance is that just when we find we have adequately adjusted to our modern culture, we get disgusted by it, and run to foreign experiences—just for the novelty of it. I know several folks who have returned to orthodox ceremonies and traditional churches precisely because they bear no resemblance to our modern Western capitalist society.  In its extreme forms, we find folks who gravitate toward any number of “religious experiences”—Greek orthodox, Christian Science, Islam, Hinduism, Kabbalah—not in pursuit of God, but in pursuit of a funky new thrill. In these cases, the longing for traditional religion is not based on doctrinal purity at all, but because some of us love the experiences more than we love the essentials.  What extraordinary irony that old stuff actually seems novel again. 

So what are the common denominators between heaven and earth, then—the essential, unchanging properties? It’s not really that complicated, is it? As the Bible lays it out, we find a sinful man, a transcendent text, and a spotless Savior. We are free to set the table in any number of ways whether sitting on dirt floors, clinking the silver and china, or eating with our hands, but these three remain unchanged.

Perhaps most ironic of all is that while we are so easily seduced by the techniques and methods of our present day, we may forget that as believers in Christ, we are essentially foreigners. We are locked in our flesh and blood world—one that at best bears a misty and vague resemblance to our permanent home in heaven. So let Sister Martha play the organ any way she likes. Encourage Pastor Drew to post his blog every Friday night. In a blink of an eye, we’re all going to worship together in a transcendent sanctuary at the seat of our risen Savior. By then, the color of the carpet won’t seem that important.