True Mission Must Be Countercultural

John H. Armstrong

Evangelical Protestant leaders who live in the Global South (sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Latin America and most of Asia) generally are optimistic about the prospects for evangelicalism in their countries. But those who live in the Global North (Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) tend to be more pessimistic.

Why are leaders in the West (Global North) more pessimistic? Because they have seen the beast of modernism and the ravages of what it has done to mission in their context. Their world is increasingly intolerant and disinterested in the Christian faith. The article concluded:

The global evangelical leaders surveyed express high levels of concern about secularism, consumerism and popular culture. More than nine-in-ten consider the influence of secularism to be either a major threat (71%) or a minor threat (20%) to evangelical Christianity in their countries. This threat is closely followed by “too much emphasis on consumerism and material goods,” which two-thirds of the leaders call a major threat (67%) and one-quarter call a minor threat (24%), and by “sex and violence in popular culture,” which about six-in-ten identify as a major threat (59%) and three-in-ten cite as a minor threat (30%). On a list of nine potential threats to evangelicalism, no other item is seen as a major threat by a majority of the leaders. Only the influence of Islam comes close, with 47% saying it is a major threat and an additional 34% calling it a minor threat.

My own conclusions are in line with this Pew Research data. The West needs a new countercultural vision of mission. The danger here is that we will develop a vision that is escapist, one rooted in a kind of pietism that looks and feels more Gnostic than Christian.

Challenging Hedonism on Every Front

Western culture is supremely hedonistic. Perhaps we can thank John Locke for this, at least in terms of the philosophical and religious influence of ideas. But there can be little doubt that the West stresses the selfish dimension of our human nature to the extreme! Descartes said that science would make us “masters and possessors of nature.” We actually believed him. Bosch adds, “This mentality has injected into our culture an insatiable desire for self-gratification” (Believing in the Future, 57). Who can doubt that Bosch is right?

People want to enjoy their sports, their vacations and their parties. We have been taught from the cradle that we “deserve” this, thus we feel profoundly entitled. We have had a hard day so we think that now we can enjoy something just for ourselves. United Airlines even had a popular commercial a few years ago that said, “You deserve a vacation!” Are you kidding? I deserve one?

Virtues like sacrifice, asceticism, modesty and self-discipline are not popular in our culture. Hey, they are not even popular in most of our churches. One of the gravest dangers of all is the “prosperity gospel,” which is nothing but a cultural version of this message – rejecting sacrifice as normal to Christian faith. This gospel is prominent in certain Pentecostal circles but in many more subtle forms it grips the mainline and evangelical churches through versions camouflaged as living normally in the modern world. It is human to crave for acceptance. It is also human to want a well-defined role in society, even to know our small part in it. But the gospel of Jesus is truly counter-cultural. If the gospel becomes inoffensive to moderns then it has simply become another part of the wider culture, not a life-transforming power rooted in the radical obedience of faith.

Conclusion

For the gospel to again have deep impact upon people in the West we must directly challenge hedonism. (This is why I do not like the use of the word “hedonism” in the “desiring God” proposal, a thesis that has much to commend it when it is not used in reductionistic way!) We must challenge hedonism by positively living and teaching an alternative culture that comes through the gospel and the biblical virtues that flow from God’s grace at work in us. This is exactly what is happening in the rise of the new asceticism and the ancient-future faith paradigm. This is also why so many young evangelicals are moving into the more ancient churches and away from pop-evangelical Christianity.

Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s classic book, Resident Aliens (1989), said this quite well. It suggested that the future called for a Christian faith and practice rooted in an understanding that believes we are called to live in a way that is genuinely alien to our social context. (Not everything in the proposal of Hauerwas and Willimon seems right to me at all but they clearly give us an important starting point!) These two authors were on to something very big two decades ago. It is time that more of us understand this call to “alien status” if we are to regain our mission in the West. A growing number of young leaders do understand this, I believe their tribe will only increase as the West grows weary under the heavy burdens of its own demise, burdens that it cannot survive without a spiritual renewal. This realization, joined with God’s promises, makes me much more of an optimist than a pessimist.