One of the worst things to come downstream from the Enlightenment is the division between the public and the private world. Alfred North Whitehead said that “Religion is what people do with their solitude”, and so it is common conviction that “religious” beliefs and values have their place in one’s mind and in certain corners of life, but never are those beliefs supposed to make it into the public sphere.

Unfortunately for Christians (who swallow this as much as anyone), this results not so much in the absence of privately held religious convictions in the public arena, but just the banishment of any beliefs outside the faith of materialistic rationalism; we are told ad nauseum that the separation between church and state forbids it.

Of course all laws and public policies are grounded on some sort of morality, whether it be that of an individual or group, gods or group of gods. It’s not a question of if we legislate based upon someone’s moral/religious/philosophical convictions, but whose morality will prevail. The first thing the Christian church has to do is to recognize that just as there is no such thing as individual neutrality—you either love Jesus or you don’t—so there is no political neutrality. We either pass laws, appoint judges, make foreign policy, regulate Wall Street, declare war, fund public schools, do whatever we do, under and by the authority of the God of the Bible, or of some other god.

The most effective lie that the dominating idol of our day has gotten everyone to believe is that he is no god. In other words, as long as the people in power pretend that they are objective, unreligious (not irreligious), rational, disinterested keepers of universal justice and fair standards, giving no one particular group a leg up over another, then everyone will settle for a seat around table since, hey, that’s all anyone else has—an even plurality. In the meantime, Democracy, that neo-Titan of ultimate choice, of the idea that men can simply legislate their morphing morality, as capricious as any Olympian, sits at the head of the table, constantly enforcing his whim upon unborn babies, nations with coveted oil, big tobacco, the ten commandments, and any idea that a fixed authority like the Constitution has any bearing on us. But the church at large does not get this, and so we fail to see that the only sort of religious values tolerated in the state are those that conform to a materialistic rationalism as strict and intolerant as any “religious” fundamentalism.

So understanding the religious nature of everything is the first step in coming to grips with what obedience in politics (and all other public spheres) looks like. A number of Christians understand the impossibility of neutrality and see that foreign gods are running the county and the West, but recognizing that fact doesn’t solve the problem. The men of Issachar didn’t just know the times, they knew what Israel should do (1 Chron. 12:32 ).

Here I want to consider the approaches that have largely been taken by evangelicals in the modern political climate, and some examples that the Bible gives us, particularly Paul in Athens , of dealing with similar situations. Christians throughout the Scriptures find themselves living within idolatrous systems—Abram in Canaan, Joseph in Egypt, David in Israel, Jeremiah in Babylon, Jesus in Judaea, Paul in the Roman Empire, and we can learn from their faithfulness.

J. Gresham Machen described the modern division between Bible-believing faith and apostate liberalism in his penetrating book Christianity & Liberalism. He describes the chasm between these two groups, whom I’ll refer to as fundamentalists and liberals, as two opposing sects who both give allegiance to the Bible, baptize in the name of the Trinitarian God, and belong to a church. Machen spotted the dishonesty within his own Presbyterian ranks, those who would deny miracles, resurrection from the dead, and the infallibility of the Bible and yet retain all the churchy words and religious accoutrements. One way to deal with a conflicting worldview is to simply morph your own, and indeed that is what liberalism has done—changed and evolved wherever the prevailing dogma demands it. Bill Clinton is a member in good standing of an evangelical church, and regularly refers to “God” in public, but everyone realizes this isn’t Yahweh in distinction from Allah, but rather a generic deity belonging to that American pantheon of bland, nondescript gods. Liberalism has all the creedal rigidity of Gumby. It keeps the church (however redefined), abandons the gospel, but stays active in culture. Liberal Christians are some of the most politically active people whether in the fight for abortion, women’s rights, public schools or military action, but the values they fight for, like the times, are always a’ changin’.

In contrast to spineless liberals, fundamentalists retain belief in the Bible but react in one of two ways when encountering the secular system. The first group are ghettoites who, driven by a desire not to be compromised in an idolatrous system, retreat into Christian enclaves where they can have as little to do with the prevailing culture as possible. Although fundamentalism didn’t begin this way, this is one of the its most common characteristics today—the way of the beleagured kid who takes his ball and goes home. It’s not that these believers don’t do anything—they create institutions, write magazines, read Puritans, make soap, and vote—they just do it outside of the mainstream with every intention of limiting contact with it. This tactic can be seen in the establishment of colleges and seminaries in the middle of nowhere that have no pretence of influencing culture. These Christians keep the gospel, keep the church, but as far as they’re concerned, the world can go to Hades. They abandon culture and the church sits under a bushel, having about as much impact as the Amish on technology.

The second group of fundamentalists, instead of taking their business elsewhere, are happy to come and hawk their wares with everyone else. They sit around the bargaining table as a special interest group, lobbying to get prayer into our polytheistic public schools, intelligent design alongside evolution curriculum, and abstinence education included with lessons on birth control so that Yahweh gets to hang out with all the important people. These fundamentalists keep the gospel and the church, but confront culture bound and nearly gagged, fighting with sticks, demanding to be relevant and ending up, well, irrelevant and marginalized. It makes no difference that they deny Democracy’s lordship as long they get in line just when told, and play by his rules--“Thou shalt have no other gods before me in my public sphere. At home or church? Fine. As long as it has no bearing on anything that matters.” The only time these people get noticed is when they say something ridiculous which is then made to sound even more ridiculous than it did in context, like when Pat Robertson declared that the US should assassinate the Venezuelan dictator before we have to a wage a multi billion dollar war against him. George Bush is a prime example of this sort of fundamentalist. Everyone knows he is a Christian, but it doesn’t stop him from praying with Muslim Imams in the White House in celebration of Ramadan. As long as he bows down to many gods, he keeps the shema of the supreme god, Democracy: “Hear O America, the Will of the people, the Will of the People is one Will.” That one will placates all religions just as long as none of them claims any superiority. Just as long as you are fundamentally egalitarian, you can believe anything you want, which like saying as long as you go where I tell you, you are free to travel wherever you please.

Both types of fundamentalists, the kind that abandon the mainstream and those that play nice within it, are to be preferred to the Christian who leaves behind the gospel, participates in culture, and decides that the church should welcome homosexuals into the ministry. The temptation to both ditches is great. Lesslie Newbigin summarizes the pitfalls: “In the attempt to be “relevant” one may fall into syncretism, and in the effort to avoid syncretism one may become irrelevant.” But there must be another way, a third path between the retreat and compromise of fundamentalism and the squishy boredom of liberalism.

When the apostle Paul went to Athens as described by Luke in Acts 17, he was provoked by the city chalk full of idols. As an iconoclastic Benjamite, one can imagine the offense he would take at the outward idolatry that characterized Athenian culture, an idolatry that saturated not just private lives and entertainment, but the entire public sphere. In a pagan empire, there would be no confusion about Caesar’s dominion, and it was exactly the Christians’ response to this—Christos Kurios, Christ is Lord, not Caesar—that brought them into conflict. The idolatry at Athens doesn’t cause Paul to scurry off the Judaean hills to practice some pure and undefiled religion. He couldn’t even wait for Silas and Timothy to meet up, but went straight for the Synagogue and marketplace where he met both covenant members and pagans.

In the agora, the Epicureans and Stoics mocked him for preaching those two gods, Jesus and Resurrection. Like good Greeks, these Athenians hated the body and thus any thought of existence beyond death other than the soul stuck in their Gnostic fur like gum, annoying but unignorable. They found his message so interesting that they took him to the Areopagus, a revered court that had lost its legislative power after Roman occupation but still functioned as a powerful cultural center where Paul would get an audience before some of the most influential men in the city.

Paul confronts the culture, but he puts his message in terms that his audience could understand. Part of the irrelevance of so much evangelism today comes from the fact that it doesn’t speak to people where they’re at. The Athenians had an altar ‘To the unknown god’ that Paul used a point of difference—“What you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it…does not live in temples made by hands...” (vv. 24-5). But he also quotes two popular poets, Epimenides and Aratus, as a point of contact—“‘In him we live and move and have our being’ as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring’” (v. 28). These words originally referred to Zeus, but Paul simply asserts it as truth about the living God and says that since we come from God, we shouldn’t think of Him as made of precious metals and rocks—that foolishness was overlooked, but now He calls men to repent (vv. 29-31). Essentially, Paul quotes a Top 40 song that communicates something true about God and uses it as a springboard to tell men to repent and believe. The fact that he knew the song reveals that he knew his audience—what they identify with, their allegiances, what things they have in common, and where he would need to confront them.

All gospel preaching involves confronting idols, but there are persuasive, strategic and relevant ways to do it. Paul doesn’t quote Old Testament prophets to Epicureans and Stoics; he quotes their prophets. This is biblical relevance, which is not to be confused with that evangelical hooker relevance, goddess of demographic studies and seeker- sensitive worship. Yahweh doesn’t dress up like idols. By loving his pagan Athenian audience, not catering to them, Paul presents a message that they can understand—even agrees with some of their idolatrous theology—and yet confronts it simultaneously. “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this…. But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them” (vv. 32-4).

At the heart of Athens , leaders in the city heard and believed the gospel. These converts would be influential in establishing the Athenian church and bringing many people to hear message of Christ. Of course other powerful officials who heard and despised the word would bring greater persecution, which biblically also grows the church since unless a seed dies and goes into the ground it cannot bear fruit. Biblical evangelism keeps the gospel and confronts the mainstream with the gospel. This is how the church is built. This is how we make disciples out of the nations. The city of God is built with bricks taken from the city of man once they’ve been broken and recast, buried and resurrected. But this can’t happen if the church never interacts with the world, or if it brings a compromised and emasculated gospel.