Machen & McAtee on the Importance of Christianity Capturing Culture

“False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed in only winning a straggler here and there. If we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which by the resistless force of logic prevent Christianity from being regarded by anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances what God desires us to do is destroy the obstacle at the root. That method or procedure is based simply on the profound believe in the pervasive belief of ideas. So, as Christians we should try to mold the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.

Christianity is exerting a far less powerful direct influence in the civilized world today than it was exerting thirty years ago.”

“The chief obstacle to the Christian religion today lies in the sphere of the intellect. Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the gospel. For making it subservient religious emotion is not enough, intellectual labor is also necessary. And that labor is being collected. The church has turned to easier task and now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life. Perhaps by God’s grace, through His good Spirit, in His good time, she might issue once more with power and an age of doubt may be followed by the dawn of an era of faith.”

Dr. J. Gresham Machen
1912

Machen here is fighting the rampant pietism that has been characteristic of the church in the West since the 1st great awakening. Though he doesn’t mention the word “Pietism” we know that is what was in his sites given his comment on how religious emotion will never be enough to make culture subservient to Christianity. This ubiquitous pietism that Machen was fighting in 1912 remains with us even yet today. It is precisely because the church continues to pursue grabbing the religious emotions of people as opposed to the intellectual labor necessary for a culture to be subservient to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

This fault has even become monstrous in the denominations once thought of as being conservative. In these denominations Christianity has become subservient to a decidedly non-Christian culture. Indeed, the “theology” called R2K, even insists, contra Machen that there can be no such thing as Christian culture. The counsel of R2K is that Machen was in error when he wrote about the necessity to make culture subservient to the Gospel. (I wish Machen had said “Christianity” instead of “Gospel” because today the word “Gospel” has become reductionistic compared to the more full orbed idea of “Christianity” which the “Gospel” is the entry point of.)

Right now culture is indeed the deadliest enemy of Christianity because our current culture has been made captive to and is an expression of anti-Christ theologies and religions. As such, our current culture is re-defining and re-shaping the definition of Christianity as the contemporary “conservative” church reinterprets Christianity through the prism of our modern anti-Christ culture. This has become so pronounced that those clergy who are not yet reinterpreting Christianity through the prism of our anti-Christ culture are now being defrocked, dismissed, and excommunicated from their formerly Christian denominations, and that because they still cling to the old ways and walk the old paths that our Reformed Fathers blazed and trod.

The intellectual labor required, that Machen spoke of, is in abeyance. Many of those reputed to be pillars in the NAPARC/LCMS/CREC/Southern Baptist denominations are using their intellect to say either that the Church should not be concerned with the culture (pietism) or that it is not possible to have a transforming effect on culture (R2K/Gnosticism). In those rare cases where the Church does admit that it can be salt and light in the culture the Church offers up a salt and light that only makes the taste flatter and the darkness heavier. (Here I’m thinking of Doug Wilson and the CREC.)

Machen wrote this over 110 years ago. Matters have only gotten worse since 1912. The Church has become a pale reflection of the Spirit of the Age. Still, there is reason for confidence …. even great confidence. The Spirit of the Age is a Spirit of death and dying. It has nothing to offer and in the end, because death when it wins, loses, the future is for those who champion Machen’s type of thinking.

However, before the Church can win out again, it has to once again realize and embrace engagement with the culture.

Another word here. What Machen says here speaks to the idea of Cultural Christianity that so many denounce. Machen is calling for a Christianity that is so predominant in the culture that it becomes the cultural presuppositional setting even for those who reject Christ. Machen is arguing that Christianity must become the fait accompli of a peoples contextual environment. Machen argues that without that reality our missionary endeavors among our own people and in our own nation will produce little fruit. The reason that Machen can argue in such a manner is that when a culture is the outward manifestation of a people’s inward Christ hating theology the consequence is that neither the Gospel nor Biblical Christianity can make any sense because people in such a Christ hating culture have no frame of reference by which to understand the claims of Christ. When culture becomes anti-Christ culture placarding and explaining Christ to such a culture is like trying to explain rocket propulsion to sub-Saharan Xhosa Africans.

Now, the accusation will be here that both Machen and I are de-super naturalizing conversion. Nothing could be further from the truth. All conversion requires a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit to open eyes. However, all because all conversion requires a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit to open eyes that does not mean we work harder to make it even darker out…. and that is what the modern church is doing. It is working more and more diligently to make our current cultural night even darker than it already is and it is doing that by reinterpreting the Christian faith through the premises of anti-Christ culture.

The visible conservative church must repent. If it does not we are headed for even more dark night and old chaos before post tenebras lux finally breaks through.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane