New York Times Op-Ed: Who Truly Threatens the Church?, by David French (Author, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020)):
There’s a popular story in Christian circles that’s literally too good to be true. According to legend, in the early 1900s, The Times of London sent an inquiry to a number of writers asking the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” The Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton responded succinctly and profoundly: “Dear Sirs, I am.”
The real story is just as profound, but less succinct. In 1905 Chesterton wrote a much longer letter to London’s Daily News … “The answer to the question ‘What is Wrong?’ is, or should be, ‘I am wrong.’ Until a man can give that answer his idealism is only a hobby.”
I’ve thought about that Chesterton quote often during the age of Trump, especially as I’ve seen the “new” Christian right re-embrace the authoritarianism of previous American political eras. At the exact time when religious liberty is enjoying a historic winning streak at the Supreme Court, a cohort of Christians has increasingly decided that liberty isn’t enough. To restore the culture and protect our children, it’s necessary to exercise power to shape our national environment. …
The motivating force behind this transformation is a powerful sense of threat — the idea that the left is “coming after” you and your family. This mind-set sees the Christian use of power as inherently protective, and the desire to censor as an attempt to save children from dangerous ideas. The threat to the goodness of the church and the virtue of its members, in other words, comes primarily from outside its walls, from a culture and a world that is seen as worse in virtually every way.
But there’s a contrary view, one that emanates from the idea of original sin, which Chesterton argued was “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” The doctrine of original sin rejects the idea that we are intrinsically good and are corrupted only by the outside world. Instead, we enter life with our own profound and inherent flaws. We are all, in a word, fallen. To quote Jesus in the book of Mark, “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” All manner of sin and evil comes “from within, out of the heart of man.”
Under this understanding of Scripture, we are all our own greatest enemy — Christians as fully as those who do not share our beliefs. We do not, either as individuals or as a religious movement, possess an inherent virtue that should entitle any of us to rule. We shun the will to power because we rightly fear our own sin, and we protect the liberty of others because we do not possess all wisdom and we need to hear their ideas. …
One of the best recent books about the American founding is “We the Fallen People: The Founders and American Democracy” by the Wheaton College professor Robert Tracy McKenzie. In it, he details at length the founders’ own reservations about human nature. …
[E]xistential humility [is essential] in any Christian political theology. This is not moral relativism. We still possess core convictions. But existential humility acknowledges the limits of our own wisdom and virtue. Existential humility renders liberty a necessity, not merely to safeguard our own beliefs but also to safeguard our access to other ideas and arguments that might help expose our own mistakes and shortcomings.
Who is wrong? I am wrong. We are wrong. Until the church can give that answer, its political idealism will meet a tragic and destructive end. The attempt to control others will not preserve our virtue, and it risks inflicting our own failures on the nation we seek to save.
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Other op-eds by David French:
- The Importance Of Hope In The Pro-Life Movement (June 25, 2023)
- Politics Can’t Fix What Ails Us; But Micah 6:4 Can (May 7, 2023)
- Easter Rebukes The Christian Will To Power (Apr. 16, 2023)
- In The Face Of Tragedy, Prayer Is An Act Of Faith (Apr. 2, 2023)
- Free Speech Doesn’t Mean Free Rein to Shout Down Others (Mar. 27, 2023)
- Faith, Not Politics, Can Heal Lonely Hearts And A Nation (Jan. 29, 2023)
- How A Great American Victory Altered American Faith (Jan. 22, 2023)
- What If Diversity Trainings Are Doing More Harm Than Good? (Jan. 19, 2023)
- The Law Is Protecting Religious Liberty, But Christians Are Not Securing Integrity In Their Institutions (Jan. 15, 2023)
- Fundamentalism Cannot Compete With Grace In The Contest For The Human Heart (Dec. 11, 2022)
- An Open Letter To Those Who Think I’ve Lost My Christian Faith Because I Support The Respect For Marriage Act (Nov. 27, 2022)
- Why I Changed My Mind About Law and Marriage, Again (Nov. 20, 2022)
- Does Jesus Need an Ad Campaign? (Nov. 13, 2022)
- Racial Discrimination Is Not the Path to Racial Justice: Why Harvard Is Wrong (Oct. 31, 2022)
- Christianity, Morality, And Hypocrisy (Oct. 23, 2022)
- The Christian Case Against Biden’s Student Loan Debt Forgiveness Plan (Sept. 4, 2022)
- Christian Political Ethics Are Upside Down (Aug. 28, 2022)
- I Prayed And Protested To End Roe. What Comes Next? (June 26, 2022)
- War, Adoption, And God's Faithfulness (Dec. 5, 2021)
- When The Church Does Right, And The State Goes Wrong: A Condemned Man's Right To Prayer And ‘Human Contact’ Before His Execution (Nov. 21, 2021)
- It’s Time to Stop Rationalizing and Enabling Evangelical Vaccine Rejection (Sept. 19, 2021)
- 'Legal Cannonball' Lawsuit By Dozens Of LGBTQ Christian College Students Has 'No Real Chance Of Success' (Apr. 11, 2021)
- How a Fictional Soccer Coach Showed What the World Should Be: Ted Lasso and the Simple Power of Forgiveness (Jan. 24, 2021)
- A Christian Leader Reminds Believers Of The Power of Character (Nov. 1, 2020)
