Restoring society by going to Church 

Restoring society by going to Church  October 21, 2016

In the course of a review of R. R. Reno’s Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society, Texas A&M professor James R. Rogers (an LCMS Lutheran) observes that most people on every side assume that going to church is a private activity.  Christians are urged to go outside the walls of their churches to change society.

But it’s within the walls of churches that God works and society is changed.  Dr. Rogers quotes St. Ignatius of Antioch:

Take heed to meet together frequently for thanksgiving [eucharis] to God and for his glory. For when you meet together frequently, the powers of Satan are cast down, and the destruction at which he aims is prevented by the unity of your faith.

From James R. Rogers, Get Thee to an Altar , First Things:

Here Reno seemingly frames activity in the churches as essentially private activity; at least, it’s without “public potency.” We hear much the same message from culture-warring Christians, and from secular conservatives who covet Christian votes. Indeed, the modern religious right was birthed by the idea that Christians needed to get out of their churches and exercise political power and influence.

Without discarding an appropriate regard for political engagement on the part of Christian citizens, I would insist that Christian power and influence are maximized before the altar and in self-abnegating service. God’s work in the Church is where the real culture war occurs.

The idea that there are spiritual forces at work in the world, or that human action does not fully control the public square, is of course rejected as an absurdity by many, if not most, people today. And certainly among the vast numbers of influential Americans, whether liberal or conservative, religious or not.

Yet Jesus tells the Roman Governor of Judea shortly before his execution, “You would have no authority over me unless it had been given you from above.” So, too, Paul reminds the Christians at Ephesus that it is “through the Church” that God’s wisdom is “made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places,” and that it is with these rulers and authorities that the Church wrestles primarily, not with powers of “flesh and blood.”

In his own letter to the Church at Ephesus, on his way to Rome for his own execution, Ignatius of Antioch encouraged the Ephesian church to

“Take heed to meet together frequently for thanksgiving [eucharis] to God and for his glory. For when you meet together frequently, the powers of Satan are cast down, and the destruction at which he aims is prevented by the unity of your faith.”

So, too, the bulk of the Book of Revelation is written to the small band of Christian faithful in the early days of the Church. They looked around them and saw their tiny movement opposed by the greatest empire the world had known, opposed by local political and religious leaders, and riven by internal schism and heresy. But John’s vision shows that, far from their being impotent, the very altar of heaven responded to the prayers of this nascent movement.

The first Christian society is the Church. Broader society is renewed by the movement outward from the Church. As a Catholic, Reno undoubtedly has a high ecclesiology. But he writes to American Christians, and to those who identify with the American religious right—most of whom, at best, think of the Church as a “voluntary organization” or, at worst, hardly think of her at all.

My suggestion for resurrecting Christian society? Get thee to an altar. Political opponents will cheer, political allies will criticize your impotent promises of “pie in the sky bye and bye.” Let them. If the Faith is in fact true, that’s where the real action is.

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