Earlier I posed the question: “what is the Church to do in these momentous times?”  (If you want to read that post first as the context to this post, click here.)  In that post, I suggested that we look to the last great movement in the church to fundamentally impact the world–the Puritans–for some ideas.  How did the Puritans set about the change their world for the glory of God?

Not surprisingly, given their dedication to the Bible, the Puritans believed that one of the keys to seeing real reformation and transformation in the church, the commonwealth, and indeed all of society was strong, godly families.  Leland Ryken writes this in his book on the Puritans called World Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were: “They believed that the family was the foundational unit of a godly society. ‘Such as families are,’ wrote James Fitch, ‘such at last the church and the commonwealth must be.’ William Gouge characterized the family as ‘a school wherein the first principles and grounds of government and subjection are learned,’ while someone else called the family ‘a true image of the commonwealth . . . .  All will be well with the commonwealth where families are properly regulated (74).’”

John Witte in The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism describes Johannes Althusius’ view of the importance of the family: “The marital household is the bedrock of law, politics, and society, Althusius believed.  It provides society with the first and best example of authority and discipline, of love and support, care and nurture of the bodies and souls of its members. It is the first school of justice and mercy, piety and charity, virtue and citizenship (186).” (Althusius was a German-born, Dutch-Calvinist legal scholar living on the continent at approximately the same time Puritanism was becoming important in England.  He is regarded by some as one of the greatest political and legal thinkers that the Reformation produced.)

Thus, agreeing with the Puritans, I often say that as the family goes so necessarily goes the church and the nation.  The family was the first social institution created by the Lord, and it is clearly foundational to the others.  Strong, godly families make strong, godly churches and strong, godly nations.  The opposite is of course equally true.

In my opinion this fact has contributed to the general failure of fundamentalism.  Fundamentalism did produce some good for the Church and the nation in general.  However, now some half a century or so into it, it is becoming obvious that it has not, for all of its efforts, impacted America or the American Church in a pervasive way.  The Church is in decline in a America, and, politically speaking, we have little more than two conservative Catholic Supreme Court Justices to show for years of essentially Protestant political activity.  Further, Millenials are completely turned off by the legalism that they perceive in fundamentalism such that it has actually contributed to the departure of the next generation.  Much more could be said on this topic, both positive and negative.  Perhaps it would be worth its own post at some point.

But, for now, back to the point.  Fundamentalism was very concerned about the state of the nation, but, honestly, had very little to say of the state of the family.   In fact, in most instances, the fundamentalists tended to just adopt a slightly sanitized version of the world’s view of how the family should operate.  This is to get the cart before the horse.  According to the Puritans, and I think according to the Bible as well, reformation in the family is a prerequisite to true reformation in the Church and the commonwealth.  Thus, my opinion is that fundamentalism was not wrong for its political activity and energy but rather for its failure to apply that same energy and activity to bringing all areas of life under the Lordship of Christ.

Thus, in answer to the questions posed by my earlier post, I think it is time that God’s people be called back to God’s vision for the family.   It is time for pastors, preachers, and the Church as a whole to boldly hold forth and live out God’s counter-cultural view of how the family should operate.  This takes courage.  In our rebellious and debauched society it is controversial just to read many Bible passages on the family and the role of men and women.  If you don’t believe me, just take a look at Titus 2:3-5 or 1 Corinthians 3:8-9 sometime.  Do we really believe that God’s way is best?  Do we trust Him enough to try it?  Do we trust Him enough to declare it to be normative, proscriptive, and best for everyone, everywhere, for all time?  If the answer is no, then we shouldn’t expect to see a powerful work of the Spirit in our times regardless of our programs, efforts, and activities.

We live in a momentous time in the history of America and the American church. The cradle of Western civilization, Europe, has long since abandoned the Faith. Rather than an example of how Christianity can transform a culture Europe is an example of a culture in decline having come to hate everything that made it great–chief among that being Christianity. According to much current research, America need only look to post-Christian Europe and its dilapidated culture to see where we are headed.

Further, we are beginning to see the second largest generation in American history come of age. The Millennials, but for the murdering of millions of their unborn brethren through the scourge of abortion, would be the largest generation in American history. The absolutely stupendous transformation of America wrought by the Boomers (the largest generation in American history) should give even a casual observer a picture of the potential of the Millennials for either good or ill. Here, statistics are not encouraging either. Millennials appear to be abandoning the Faith in droves, and, if the statistics hold true, America will mirror the spirituality of Europe within a few decades.

Thus, we stand at a pivotal point in history. The American church hangs in the balance. The heart of a generation seems to be slipping away. A once great civilization appears to be near collapse—America being its last bastion teetering and near to falling, nearly conquered not by enemies from without but from within. Standing at the precipice of the end of a civilization that has done so much good for so many—what is the church to do? How is this generation to be reached? How is Christ’s Kingdom best to be spread in 21st century America?

These and like questions seem to be on the hearts and minds of many in the American church. The Southern Baptists, still American’s largest Protestant denomination, just finished a historic convention in Orlando which considered similar questions. Ken Ham’s book Already Gone has caused many to seriously confront the failures of the American church to reach the coming generation. Finally, my own church is currently considering its vision for the future with these issues foremost in those considerations.

At their best, this soul searching derives from a genuine desire to impact the world for Christ in our time. It seems we can’t escape the desire to impact the world in a fundamental way, but how? These are therefore the questions with which we wrestle and the goals toward which we work.

Western Christendom has impacted the world for Christ in a fundamental way in the past, just not the recent past. The late Prof. Harold J. Berman wrote in his excellent book Law and Revolution that “Puritanism in England and America, and Pietism, its counterpart on the European continent, were the last great movements within the institutional church to influence the development of Western law in any fundamental sense (31).” Prof. Berman is correct, not just with regard to law but all of culture. Puritanism in particular left virtually no part of Anglo-American Western Civilization untouched. From art to science to politics to law to the family, Puritanism transformed culture in a pervasive way. For all the efforts of the church since the age of the Puritans, culture has not been impacted in such a fundamental way.

Thus, rather than re-doubling our efforts on methods that have not worked, perhaps wisdom would dictate looking to the past to consider what did work. Perhaps we should consider what the Puritans actually believed and taught. Perhaps we should consider how they lived. And, we should do this, if we want to do it at all, not through the Victorian lens of Nathaniel Hawthorne or the perverted lens of modern media or the distorted lens of modern historical revisionists, but rather by considering the Puritans as they actually were. Maybe we should do the same with the Reformers, those Christian world-changers who predated the Puritans.

Of course, that would necessitate a look into history, and the problem is that modern man, and the modern church-man, hates history. Os Guiness states that we have an “abominable view of history,” and he is exactly right. It might also necessitate a rethinking of some of our modern doctrinal innovations and our contemporary programs, methods, and ideas about how church should work. Likely it will require much repentance for foolishness and abandoning of God’s ways of living, working, thinking, believing, and evangelizing. Are we up to the challenge? Only time will tell, but it won’t take a lot of time. In just a few decades we will know.  And, if at that point our churches are as empty as Britain’s are now, then we failed.