Mindfulness and Meditation

Why Christianity Lost America?Vishal Mangalwadi (Author of The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, Thomas Nelson 2011)

Christianity lost America because 20th-century evangelicalism branded itself as the party of faith. By default Secularism (science, university, media) became the party of truth. This is one reason why 70% Christian youth give up meaningful involvement with the church when they grow up.

Pentecostals, Jehovah Witnesses, and Baptists are the poorest communities in America. According to a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, less than 20% followers of these religious groups make more than $75,000 a year. By comparison, 67% of the Reformed Jews, 65% percent Hindus, and 57% Conservative Jews earn more than $75,000/year. The finding that American evangelicals are poorer than the Roman Catholics surprised Pew Researchers who had thought that the economic miracle of the “modern” age was Protestantism’s fruit.

The study raises questions such as: Has American evangelicalism lost Protestantism’s original DNA? Do American missions still carry the “good news for the poor?” (Luke 4:18) Or, is their success, spectacular in some countries, a tribute to the original and still-lingering image of Protestantism? Why did Christianity lose the power that gave it influence over education and economy, government and law, press and entertainment? How can the Church recover the power to prevail over the forces of evil?

In November 2011, I met an American missionary who has served in Guatemala for 36 years. He described a recent (unpublished) doctoral study examining Protestantism in one part of Guatemala. The Hispanic scholar had hoped to substantiate Max Weber’s thesis on the connection between Protestantism and economic development. The data, however, drove him to conclude that the gospel taught by present-day American missions makes no perceptible difference to the economic life of the believing communities.

The Pew study found a direct correlation between college education and economic status of religious communities in America: poorer communities had fewer college graduates.

This is astounding, for classical Protestantism was synonymous with educated clergy. USA’s DNA, for example, was written by network of 140 university graduates who founded the Massachusetts colony. One hundred of these had studied in Cambridge (significantly 35 came from Emmanuel, the most Puritan college in Cambridge) and 30 in Oxford. Within six years of arriving, they established the college that became Harvard University, committed to Veritas – “Truth”. Twentieth century American missions have ignored higher education to the point that many Guatemalan Protestant pastors do not have even High School diplomas! In Argentina, Protestants (including Charismatic, Pentecostal, and evangelicals) have over 50 mission agencies and 500 missionaries but not one university.

Why is the sun setting on the West? This essay summarizes one factor: the brand Christianity.

In November 2011, I visited two classes at a Christian university in North America. I asked both: “How many of you would still believe Christianity if you found out tomorrow that Christianity was not true. That is: God never became a man; Jesus did not die for our sin; or, that he did not rise from the dead?”

Twelve hands went up in each class of about 25 and 45 students. These sincere and devout students had grown up in Christian homes, gone to church all their lives and studied in Christian schools. Some had been in that Christian university for three years! They respected their elders who taught them that Christianity was all about faith with little concern for truth.

Christianity lost America because 20th-century evangelicalism branded itself as the party of faith. Secularism (science, university, media) became the party of truth. This is one reason why 70% Christian youth give up meaningful involvement with the church when they grow up.

In the second class, only one in four students perceived Christianity as disconnected with truth. This was because my host professor had taught them to believe because Christianity is true. Some professors and pastors do teach that, yet the “truth-less” brand is common perception because it is reinforced by most pastors, Bible teachers, and some Christian professors.

I asked both classes if they thought secular universities knew truth. Overwhelmingly the answer was positive. When I asked them to name one secular professor who claims to know the truth, both classes named Stephen Hawking. (No student, however, had read Hawking’s latest book which demolishes the God of Western logic but not the God who has revealed Himself.) Secularism acquired the “Truth” brand by default because evangelicalism began defining Church’s mission as cultivating Faith, not promoting knowledge of Truth(compare 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Tim 2:25; Titus 1:1, etc.).

I asked these questions because two years earlier I had met students from that university on a mission trip in New Delhi. Their dedication was inspiring. Their love for Jesus was contagious. But they were “storying” not witnessing. That is, unintentionally they were rebranding missionaries as tellers of alien stories, not witnesses to Truth.

Jesus can claim trans-cultural authority, demand allegiance of all cultures and call them to repent only if all nations have actually been given to him as his inheritance (Psalm 2:8; Matthew 28:18). If he really is the “ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5): the “ruler of God’s creation.”(Rev. 3:14). Jesus cannot be the Lord and have no say over social and political, work and business dimensions of life. The fact that some American missions to Muslims and upper-caste Hindus are backing away from Christ’s lordship over their cultures seems to be a result of their increasing uncertainty about Truth.

To discuss the “image” problem does not mean glossing over the deeper problem of substance. Economic weakness is often a caused by intellectual and social poverty. In the long run, the image is created by theology – by the substance of faith. This essay can look only at the core theological issue: how American evangelicalism views the Bible.

The branding or perception of Christianity as a religion of faith, disconnected with truth, is tragic given that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only reason why any medieval, modern, or postmodern person talks about “Truth” that can be stated in rational words and propositions (creeds or equations). The secular academy and science acquired the truth-brand only because Secularism is a Protestant heresy. The university exists because the Church was committed to knowing and believing truth. Secularism didn’t create the university. It obtained that Christian institution because, liberal Protestantism surrendered to Rationalism and evangelicalism abandoned the life of the mind. That enabled Secularism to walk away with the brand Truth. The fact is that secular atheism and materialism leave no room for rational/propositional truth. That is why Secularism is dogmatic about relativism.

In a culture that asserts that all religions are the same, even Christians do not know that:

• Hinduism, like Greco-Roman religions, is based (self-consciously) on myths.

• The Buddha rejected Hinduism’s mythical gods and goddesses in favor of mystical (non-rational) Silence.

• Islam has words that are believed to be true. These words were uttered in a state of non-rational trance, called “prophecy.” Islam, therefore, rests on private, non-verifiable communications of an individual. Sometimes Mohammed went into “prophetic” trance in public, but no one saw or heard angel Gabriel talking to him. The power of his utterances rested on the sword, not on evidence. When his words about the past (e.g., stories from Old and New Testament times) contradicted documented history, his followers had to assume that contradictions mean that texts have been corrupted. Non-verifiable trance communications overrode documented history.

• Jewish revelation was remarkably different: No one was asked to believe Moses because of his private, albeit very rational, encounter with the supernatural at the burning bush. The sign that God gave to skeptical Moses was empirically and publicly testable: “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain” (Exodus 3: 12).

Not long afterwards, even those who doubted Moses’ meeting with God at the burning bush were worshipping God at that mountain. The entire assembly heard God’s words as He spoke and then wrote the First Commandment, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. [Therefore] You shall have no other gods beside me” (Exodus 20:2–3).

These rational words reminded the Hebrews of what they knew first hand; empirically, not in a trance:

• Moses did not kill the first-born of Egypt – he didn’t have a sword!
• Moses did not part the Red Sea.
• Moses did not drown their enemies
• Moses was not feeding them with Manna.
• Moses did not bring water out of a Rock.

For the Jews, history confirmed revelation. On Mount Sinai, the Hebrews heard God corporately, just as the Apostles heard the words from heaven, “This is my beloved son.” No one asked the Hebrews to blindly believe a prophet. They knew Who their deliverer was through His wonderful works in their history and through His power over physical nature. God communicated in words because His works in nature and culture cannot always be understood unless He also explains them. Nor can His word be understood unless we also examine His works. Human communication works exactly the same way: words and works explain and confirm each other.

The Lord Jesus used this same Old Testament epistemology: He asked skeptics to believe his words because of empirically observable works that demonstrated who He was. (John 5:35–37; 10:25 & 37–38; 14:11–12, etc.)

Some American missions are going seriously wrong because they misunderstand Romans 10:17, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Is hearing simply the impact of sound waves on eardrums and their transmission into nerve impulses in the auditory sector of the brain? Or is it understanding? Is understanding (or believing) sensual, or is it intellectual?

Many who heard Christ’s own words did not believe because their hearing was without understanding. The faith that saves is spiritual illumination. (Matthew 16:17; Isaiah 6:10, etc.) Understanding and believing are not natural outcomes of physical experience of hearing. A monkey also hears, humans can understand and believe because God takes the trouble to confirm His word. John summarizes his witness in 20:30–31: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” Jews and Christians believed God’s words because of empirically observable and testable works.

God commands us not to believe what is false because He has confirmed his Word by His works. Human beings are created to seek and to know the truth. Believing what is false was the greatest sin that a Jew could commit. John summarized what he saw, heard, touched, and handled, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory . . . full of grace and Truth . . . For the Law was given through Moses; grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1: 14 & 17).

Original Christian settlers in America chose Truth as Harvard’s motto, because it is a central theme in the Gospel of John. Words such as “true” and “truth” appear over 40 times in 21 chapters. Facing crucifixion, Jesus states the rationale for his coming into a world that was lost in darkness of ignorance: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world— to bear witness to the truth.” (John 18:37) After his resurrection, Jesus baptized his disciples with “the Spirit of Truth” (John 14: 17; 15:26; 16:13) and sent them out as witnesses: truth-tellers.

Greeks and Romans had better stories than the Old and New Testaments. Christianity conquered the pagan West because Jesus and his apostles unleashed the power of Truth. It birthed universities and research labs because it was passionate about Truth. Evangelicalism is losing America because although it celebrates grace: it has no hymn to celebrate “Amazing Truth.” It has handed over the “Truth” brand to Secularism.

Why did Christian universities (medieval and modern) study culture and nature along with the scriptures? They understood that to know truth we need to read both the book of God’s words as well as the book of God’s works. To the Sadducees who did not believe in resurrection, Jesus said, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matthew 22:28–30).

How does one study “the power of God?” The Psalmist says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork.” (19:1). It was this biblical rationale that prompted Galileo to study the stars.

Paul agrees with the Psalmist, “. . . what may be known of God is manifest in them [the pagans], for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead . . .” (Romans 1:19).

The current biblical-worldview movement becomes less than biblical when it focuses on the idea that in order to know truth, a believer needs only read the book of God’s words (Special Revelation). The Bible’s own teaching is that a righteous man also studies God’s works (General Revelation) in nature and culture: “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2). Christians started science laboratories, planted botanical gardens, and dug up archeological sites and fossils in order to settle scientific issues by studying nature.

William Carey, a British cobbler-turned-linguist, came to India and pioneered the modern missionary movement. He was trying to reach oral learners. Therefore, he did for them exactly what God had done for illiterate slaves – given them written texts, not oral stories.

In India, cobblers (Carey) repaired shoes and carpenters (Jesus) made ploughs and door-frames. They had no need to learn to read or write. A Protestant cobbler, like a Jewish carpenter, learnt to read because God had given written text. God had also commanded illiterate peasants to write His word on door posts. Every carpenter, shepherd, and fisherman was required to meditate upon the text that God had so graciously given and to teach it to his children. No wonder, synagogues became centers of literacy and the Temple became Israel’s law university.

God’s requirements created an intellectual culture in which a 12-year-old Jewish boy, Jesus, was not content with religious festivities. He stayed in the Temple to inquire. Protestantism imbibed this biblical culture and made literacy a universal religious obligation.

It was this version of Protestantism that Carey brought to India. He translated and printed the Bible for those who could not read. . . and began schools. In order to “reach unreached peoples,” to save their souls, Carey gave to Asia our first vernacular college. It became Serampore University.  Carey, the Bible translator, studied Indian plants, agriculture, and rocks. He taught botany, horticulture, and astronomy. He wrote well-researched essays on agriculture and forestry.

Thankfully, the brand he gave to Christianity still persists. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus who are turning to Christ do not yet realize that much of today’s evangelical Christianity is very different from what 19th-century missions had brought to India. Some Guatemalans, like many converts to “Protestantism” in South and Central America, are confused and disappointed. They are sensing that Christianity they received is not the Protestantism that created history’s greatest nations. Indeed some American missions are simply the beneficiaries of the prestige of the classic brand even though the product they deliver is very different.

So, why has Christianity lost its passion for Truth and, therefore, the West? A short answer is because:

The Bible-believing Church has turned its sun into a silo In November 1944, Oxford’s Socratic Club invited C. S. Lewis to speak to them on the topic, “Is Theology Poetry?” Since theological treatises are rarely written in verse, the question really was: Do Christians believe creeds because they satisfy their poetic imagination? Or, do Christians believe the Bible because it is true? The topic was selected because Oxford skeptics assumed that while science dealt with reality, Christianity was but a story, catering to believers’ imaginative fantasies.

Lewis was an expert on myths and a master storyteller. He knew that the topic “Is Theology Poetry?” implied that biblical theology is mythology, not truth. Lewis shocked his audience by saying that if Christianity he believed in is a story, “then I find that the mythology I believe in is not the one I like the most. I like Greek mythology much better, Irish better still, Norse best of all.” Indeed, anyone who reads the first page of the New Testament would know that if Matthew was writing a story, then he was the worst story-teller in all of history. While pagan religions were based on stories, Jesus sent out “witnesses” (i.e., truth-tellers) to transform their world. Peter assured the believers that he and other apostles “did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

Lewis explained that while Christianity dealt with truth, Oxford’s secular cosmology, which assumed that matter alone was real, was simply an academic myth. The secular (pseudo-scientific) myth explained nothing – not even science. Christianity shed real light on tough questions. Right there in Oxford, biblical theology had explained arts and science, myth and morality for centuries. It had guided Europe in matters of meaning, value, and the purpose of life – individual, family, and national.

Lewis pointed out that the new academic myth that nature was real but supernature was imaginary, had already admitted that it could not even explain science:  Why random chemical processes in our brains should be trusted to lead us to truth.

Lewis didn’t have to belabor that point. His listeners knew that Einstein had conceded that for those who deny supernatural Reason (logos), it was a completely inexplicable “miracle” that random chemical accidents in the human brain do in fact lead us to valid conclusions (truth).

Lewis reminded his audience that he grew up with what historian H. G. Wells called the “Scientific Outlook.” But this very outlook forced Lewis to progress from:

Materialism   (“mythical cosmology that matter is the ultimate reality”) to Idealism (Reason that illuminates finite minds must precede matter) and on to Theism (For creation to be rational and for reason to be trustworthy, there had to be a rational creator) . . . and finally to Christ (The Gospel is an eyewitness account that Logos had come as flesh. He was crucified under a named governor and was resurrected on the third day.)

Lewis admitted that the so-called Scientific Outlook is real just as dreams are real. However, the world you experience when you are fully awake is more real. This is because in waking stage you can interpret aspects of the dream, but when you are dreaming, you can make sense neither of the dream world nor of the world you experience while awake. Scientism, like dream, explains nothing. Biblical theology (worldview) makes sense of everything – including science.

Lewis’ audience was savvy. They knew Nietzsche. They knew that without God the “Scientific Outlook” could not help humanity derive values or laws to regulate our social, economic, or political lives.

Intellectual, social, and political darkness is engulfing the West because evangelicalism has put God’s word – the sun that illuminated all of life in Protestant nations – into a silo. Lewis concluded his 1944 lecture with words that have become classic:

studies. It is not surprising that professors with a self-consciously biblical worldview find that often they are better equipped than their secular colleagues to interact across disciplines.  The movement will soon develop its own website, meanwhile you can follow this education revolution on www.RevelationMovement.com