Review: Empowered Witness: Politics, Culture, And the Spiritual Mission Of The Church By Alan D. Strange (Part 1)

by on December 19, 2024 | Comment

The debate last year over the overture by Evangel Presbytery to the General Assembly (GA) of the Presbyterian Church in America (overture 12), which was adopted by GA, presented acutely the question of the spirituality of the church. Overture 12 asked GA to petition humbly the United States federal government and by so doing to remind the government that it is a divine institution, that holy Scripture teaches that God made humans in two sexes, male and female, and that it is biologically impossible for humans to change their sex. Overture 12 called upon the government to “renounce the sin of all medical and surgical sex change procedures in minors.”1 The assembly adopted the overture.

Let me be very clear: the concerns represented by Overture 12 are entirely reasonable. Every administration after the second administration of George W. Bush has, to one degree or another, pushed the LGBTQ agenda.2 The Obama and Biden Administrations spent twelve years seeking to normalize even the most radical wings of the LGBTQ movement, and none more aggressively than the Biden Administration, which featured so-called transgender people in prominent positions in its administration. The most visible of these has been Dr. Rachel Levine (formerly Richard Levine, a pediatrician), a male who presents himself as female, who was confirmed to the position of Assistant Secretary of Health. The federal government has the power (if not the authority) to push massive social changes, and the Biden Administration has forcefully pushed the trans-agenda.

The question is not, however, whether it is advisable for young people to undergo radical surgeries, etc. It is most ill-advised, as the United Kingdom and some European nations have decided. The trans-agenda is against nature, it is against all previous standards of medical care, and it is quite frankly insane. It was not long ago that Dr. Levine would have been hospitalized as mentally ill. In our time, however, the Senate has confirmed him to a high-ranking position in the federal government. Neither is the question whether the changes are being pushed by the Biden Administration and the mass media. The evidence is all about us. Media outlets, once lambasted by the social left as “reactionary” (e.g., CBS), have taken it upon themselves to catechize Americans in the latest orthodoxy of the sexual revolutionaries. Major businesses (e.g., Target) have pushed the trans-agenda. Public school districts across the nation have become ideological battle grounds as teachers and administrators have used their position to advance the trans-agenda. There is every reason to be deeply concerned about this phase of what Carl Trueman calls “expressive individualism.”

The question remains, however, how the church as church, as an institution, should respond to great social crises such as the trans agenda or, in the nineteenth-century, man-stealing, slavery, and the Civil War. What is the mission of the church? Is the visible church authorized to speak, as the church, to these issues? If so, what are the limits of such proclamations? Is there anything to which the visible church may not speak? After all, the theologically liberal and socially left Presbyterian Church in the USA has adopted no fewer than 127 social positions.4

Further, what does it mean to speak of the “spirituality of the church,” and is not this very language disqualified since it was used to justify crimes against humanity?4 These are the very difficult questions Alan Strange explores and seeks to address in the six chapters of this new book.

This slender, readable volume is drawn from the author’s PhD Dissertation (University of Wales) published as The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge.5 The author alludes to this larger work frequently. Readers who want to explore these issues in greater detail may wish simply to read this earlier volume.

What is the mission of the church? This is the issue Alan Strange raises and addresses briefly in the introduction, where he also introduces us to some of the central concerns of the work and the vocabulary of the question. What does it mean to speak of a primarily spiritual mission of the church? Strange answers, Christians are “to live in this age not for this age but for the coming age that has broken in on this age and beckons us to a new heavens and a new earth that await all that trust in Christ alone” (2–3). If the church’s mission is spiritual, what is the church? Following Abraham Kuyper, he characterizes her as “an institute” and as “an organism” (4). It is with the church as a visible institution that this work is chiefly concerned. He raises the specter of the social gospel (on the social right and left) and calls for us to “let the church be the church” (6). Under this heading one might have expected to find a thorough discussion of Westminster Confession of Faith 31.4:

Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.

The author, however, discusses the confession only briefly (9),6 which decision may lie at the bottom of some of the ambiguities in the book to which we will return. He calls on “all Reformed and Presbyterians—indeed all Protestants—however they conceive the relations of church and state, faith and politics, and so on, to embrace the ‘mere spirituality of the church'” (11).

Strange’s guide to navigating these issues is Charles Hodge (1797–1878), the bulwark of Reformed orthodoxy of old Princeton Seminary, whose approach he sees as the way to navigate between the error of dismissing the spirituality of the church and what he regards as the “radical” position of Southern Presbyterians such as J. H. Thornwell (1812–62) (e.g., 22). Hodge, he argues, “developed his doctrine” of the spirituality of the church “in a subtle and nuanced fashion” that preserved the spirituality of the church while allowing her “to retain a prophetic voice” (23). He also characterizes Hodge’s version of the spirituality of the church as “supple and practical” (33). Still later he describes Hodge’s view as “careful and nuanced” (75).

For Strange, Hodge’s approach has these virtues because it allowed the northern Presbyterian Church to denounce slavery without compromising the spirituality of the church (31–51).

The strength of the book is its clear and helpful survey of the major issues, players, and views in the nineteenth-century context of these questions. Chapters two, three, and four of the work very helpfully survey the nineteenth-century discussions and arguments over slavery, and how the church (as an institution) should (or should not) respond. Strange observes how we all, at any given time, are influenced by the prevailing assumptions of our own time and how all our heroes, even Charles Hodge, have feet of clay (e.g., 49, 118). For example, though Hodge always affirmed the humanity of enslaved Africans (47), in contrast to many other Americans of the period, Strange shows that his track record on slavery was mixed (119). The author’s frankness is commendable. His review of and explanation of the differences between the Northern and Southern churches and the tensions between and reunion of the New and Old School churches is enlightening.

In the second part of this review, we will continue to consider how the spirituality of the church has been and should be applied in the cases of slavery and Overture 12, looking at Strange’s work and the confession.

Notes

  1. Presbyterian Church in America, “Overture 12,” 2.
  2. See “Resources On LGBTQ And Revoice.”
  3. Presbyterian Church in the USA, Social Issues.
  4. Because of the association, in the minds of some, of the expression spirituality of the church with the defense of Southern slavery by Presbyterians, Bryan Estelle speaks simply of the mission of the church, which is the core issue. See Bryan D. Estelle, The Primary Mission of the Church: Engaging or Transforming the World? (Fern, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2022). See also “Resources On The Spirituality Of The Church.”
  5. Alan Strange, The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge, Reformed Academic Dissertations (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2017).
  6. We might have expected this section of the confession to be reviewed in chapter 1 of the book.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Alan D. Strange, Empowered Witness: Politics, Culture, and the Spiritual Mission of the Church (Wheaton: Crossway, 2024).

You can find the whole series here.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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