by Bruce T. Gourley
Published April 2013
(Baptist Studies Bulletin Archives Index)
The person of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Gospels has always challenged religious dogma and doctrine-centric Christianity. Dogmatic Christians from the early Christian era to the present have condemned as insufficient Christ’s greatest commandments of freely and voluntarily loving God with all one’s heart and loving others as self. In the minds of such Christian judges, righteousness is found somewhere else.
Where? Broadly speaking, salvation in the minds of many Christians has long been rooted in mentally assenting to human statements about scripture and faith. Indeed, the primacy of doctrinal formulas is the headline story of the two millennia of Christian history. From the creeds crafted by the early church fathers and imposed upon citizens by penalty of censure and persecution, to modern efforts to legislate religious doctrine in civil government and law, this narrative has positioned Christendom in opposition to the Christ of the gospels. Yet despite such efforts to shackle the gospel, many individuals throughout Christian history have found salvation through Christ’s teachings, rather than institutional doctrine.
In the late eighteenth century, the founding of America as the world’s first secular nation–a development fought for and applauded by Baptists–struck a blow at the root of the story of Christ-less Christendom. Formally separated from government and law, Christianity was freed to thrive in a marketplace of voluntary faith and religious liberty for all.
For many Christians accustomed to mandated faith, however, the freedom to follow Christ (or not) according to one’s own conscience was blasphemous. Many Christians of the early nineteenth century openly voiced disdain of America’s godless constitution that separated church from state. Christian efforts to force America into becoming a Christian nation (in government and law) marked the early part of the century (a campaign to discontinue Sunday mail delivery was just one example of such efforts) and have continued to this day.
Underlying the two-centuries long effort to mandate Christian faith in America is the argument that full religious freedom applies only to Christianity. More precisely, Christian nationalist advocates of past and present have demanded privileged status for the Christ-less version of Christianity–that is, an imposed faith where human-constructed dogma is authoritative, and the teachings of Christ insufficient, for individual or national salvation.
Embodying contemporary preference for religious dogma over and against the freedom-centric teachings of Christ are the leaders of the two largest Christian denominations in America, the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention (not to mention much of evangelicalism in general), who insist that the government should force their religious belief against contraception (a view foreign to scripture, incidentally) upon persons of other faith or no faith. Another modern expression of the two-centuries old campaign to limit religious liberty to proper Christians only is found in the argument that gay marriage is an infringement of (Christians’) religious liberty. And in North Carolina this month, a handful of state lawmakers demanded enactment of Christ-less Christianity in proposing a bill to annul church state separation in the Tar Heel state (see also here; the bill has since been retracted).
If history is any guide, dogmatic, institutional Christianity will last as long as the earth sustains human life. Many Christians living in the worldview of a Christ-less Christianity look with eager anticipation for the coming of a smooth-talking Antichrist whose earthly war against Christ will lead to global destruction precipitating the physical reign of Christ on the planet. On the other hand, dogmatic, Christ-less Christianity evidenced so vividly during the past two thousand years has too often been an antichrist in our midst, a false faith that mouths the name of Christ while advancing an agenda foreign to the gospels and destructive of the very teachings of Jesus.
Many astute observers of religious life in America realize that this ages-old Christ-less Christianity is a prime reason why young people, having little time or inclination for what they perceive as inauthentic faith, are abandoning organized religion in spades.
Baptists (and other dissenters) of old navigated–at the price of great persecution–a world infused with Christ-less Christianity and by their perseverance blazed a new trail of Christ-centric free and voluntary faith for all. Some Christians in some countries are yet persecuted by governments and laws built upon Christ-less Christianity. Meanwhile in America, many Christians, including no few Baptists, would do away with equal religious liberty for all persons.
The allure of Christ-less Christianity remains ever present. As in the days of old, America and the world is in need of the witness of traditional Baptists and other dissenters who are committed to keeping Christ in Christianity.