There are certain things which you cannot expect from such a true Christian Church. In the first place, you cannot expect from it any cooperation with non-Christian religion or with a non-Christian program of ethical culture. There are those who tell us that the Bible ought to be put into the public schools, and that the public schools should seek to build character by showing the children that honesty is the best policy and that good Americans do not lie nor steal. With such programs a true Christian Church will have nothing to do. The Bible, it will hold, is made to say the direct opposite of what it means if any hope is held out to mankind from its ethical portions apart from its great redemptive center and core; and character building on the basis of human experience may be character destruction; it is the very antithesis of that view of sin which is at the foundation of all Christian convictions and all Christian life.
There is no such thing, a true Christian Church will insist, as a universally valid fund of religious principles upon which particular religions, including the Christian religion, may build; “religion” in that vague sense is not only inadequate but false; and a morality based upon human experience instead of upon the law of God is no true morality. Against such programs of religious education and character building, a true Christian Church will seek from the state liberty for all parents everywhere to bring up their children in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, will bring up its own children in accordance with the Word of God, and will try to persuade all other parents, becoming Christians, to bring up their children in that same Christian way.
In the second place, you cannot expect from a true Christian Church any official pronouncements upon the political or social questions of the day, and you cannot expect cooperation with the state in anything involving the use of force. Important are the functions of the police, and members of the Church, either individually or in such special associations as they may choose to form, should aid the police in every lawful way in the exercise of those functions. But the function of the Church in its corporate capacity is of an entirely different kind. Its weapons against evil are spiritual, not carnal; and by becoming a political lobby, through the advocacy of political measures whether good or bad, the Church is turning aside from its proper mission, which is to bring to bear upon human hearts the solemn and imperious, yet also sweet and gracious, appeal of the gospel of Christ. Read more»
J. Gresham Machen | “The Responsibility of the Church in our New Age,” The Presbyterian Guardian 45 (February 1976): 5, 13, 14
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J. Gresham Machen
John Gresham Machen (1881–1937) was one of the most significant figures in the evangelical church throughout the twentieth century. He is best known through his vision for a truly evangelical presbyterian church in the USA, and as the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania.
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