Abstract
American Christians—particularly Reformed Christian clergy and their seminaries—like nothing better than to speak of how the church is engaged in a God-given mission to “transform” the society and culture in which they reside. If you are accustomed to mouthing such a claim, then you must read Mark Smith’s Secular Faith. In this work, Smith offers an articulate, well-informed argument that across American history, the contrary is true. American churches have been the transformed—not the transformer.
Surveying how denominations in the United States have dealt with the contentious issues of slavery, divorce, homosexuality, abortion, and women’s rights, Smith chronicles how in every case religious leaders and their communities of faith have followed rather than led the culture. Smith acknowledges that these issues have prompted significant heated debate and even division within the culture and the churches. But he maps rather convincingly how these communions have conformed to whatever consensus of opinion is being shaped by forces other than religion in the culture.
Smith notes that American denominations have tended to deal in one of three ways with issues that may in a previous age have seemed settled but begin to be rethought by the culture. One approach is for the church to stand firm on its traditional stance despite the fact that the culture is moving away from that position. More often than not, such churches try to minimize their members’ contact with other people in the culture in order to insulate them from the culture’s influence. An example of such a church would be a group like the Amish. But Smith observes that this strategy does not succeed since, as Smith puts it, “members of religious groups drink from the same cultural fountain that sustains the rest of society” (p. 14). So in most cases the impact of the culture eventually seeps into even the most insulated religious communion through its membership, and the church alters its stance. Or, if minimal or no seepage is experienced, the ability of such a church to attract new members declines because the church is no longer attractive to the larger culture.
A second approach practiced commonly by the Catholic Church involves the church affirming its traditional stand on an issue like birth control or abortion but refraining from promoting legal sanctions against the offending activity. In the process, members are not offended by the “heavy hand” of the church since the questionable behavior is considered a private decision left to the individual.
Finally, a third option often taken by churches has been simply to reverse their former stance on an issue so that it is compatible with whatever consensus is developing in the wider culture. This can occur as a new generation of leaders that has drunk deeply from the society’s “cultural fountain” take over the reins of a church. Often, this move is accompanied by a reinterpretation of Scripture on the issue in question in order to show that previous generations simply got the meaning of the source revelation wrong. This conveniently allows such a church to claim that its revised interpretation is more faithful to the original message of Scripture than any prior interpretations across Christian history. A recent example of this option would be the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Smith is primarily concerned in his book to refute the “culture wars” thesis first formulated by the sociologist James Davison Hunter and much overused in public discourse in contemporary political and religious debates. For Smith the so-called “culture wars” are not as Hunter portrays them, namely a struggle for cultural dominance by two sets of combatants with diametrically opposed worldviews. Instead, for Smith, there is no culture war if one recognizes that those engaged in American society’s current debates—just as in the past—share certain overlapping commitments to individual rights and representative democracy. It is these commitments that have led historically and will lead in the future to cultural consensus on contested issues. Smith is remarkably optimistic about the persistence of these commitments into the future and their ability to foster eventual consensus on whatever issues might arise.
That Smith focuses so on the culture war thesis is particularly regrettable because it causes him to overlook his work’s far more challenging implications for religion and for society. For society, Smith’s own thesis seems to undercut his remarkable faith in the persistence of the overlapping commitments to individual rights and representative democracy that he credits with the creation of the hard-won, current cultural consensuses that slavery is unacceptable, divorce is permissible, homosexuality is a healthy sexual orientation, abortion should be legal, and women deserve equal rights. After all, his study insists that views can change particularly when new generations who have drunk from the cultural fountain assume leadership. How then is the “cultural fountain” from which they drink protected from someone or some group intentionally or inadvertently dropping into the fountain a pollutant that undermines these foundational commitments to individual rights and representative democracy? One does not have to look too far back in the world’s history to find supposedly enlightened nations drinking from a cultural fountain so poisoned by ethnic hatred and prejudice that individual rights and representative democracy are overridden.
For religious leaders in general, Smith’s book presents a more penetrating challenge than all the recent books by the so-called “new atheists” like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. After all, these writers only critique belief and religion’s negative impact on society. Smith, on the other hand, insists that religion in America is and always has been a follower to the culture’s lead. Religious groups may for a time resist the direction of the culture. But just give religious communions time, and they will come around to whatever the cultural consensus might be.
For Reformed Christians, Secular Faith is even more troubling still since he dares to question with historical data their most treasured shibboleth, namely that they are of that tradition whereby Christ transforms culture. In far too many cases for comfort, Smith’s account of Christian denominations’ submissive relationship to American culture is persuasive, if not downright convincing, that the transformer has, in actual fact, been the transformed.