The Enemy Isn't Us

"We have met the enemy and he is us." This is one of those adages that is at least partially true in just about every scenario. And it gets bonus points for originating in my favorite comic strip.

But I'm starting to weary of it, at least in the culture war sphere. The latest Christian figurehead to employ it is Phil Cooke, a successful media producer and prolific cultural engagement writer who I encountered on Dean Abbott's podcast.

The context was his new book "The Way Back: How Christians Blew Our Credibility and How We Get It Back." As the title would suggest, and he made clear in the interview with Dean, he believes Christians weren't so much beaten in the culture war as they were disqualified by their own hypocrisy and false witness. Working from a basket of four metrics intended to measure Christian integrity - church attendance, prayer, Bible reading and tithing - he concludes that Christians aren't even coming close to practicing what they preach. The takeaway: how can we expect the secular world to listen to us when we aren't even listening to ourselves? He goes on to decry the politicization of Christianity and what he calls the anger-based approach typified by boycotts. He recommends a return to neighborly good deeds and cheerful Gospel-sharing.

This is a familiar refrain, echoing some of the arguments of Russell Moore and Rod Dreher. Each time I hear this line of reasoning, it's pitched as bold and fresh. Those pitching are always quick to define their winsome approach in contrast to the angry thundering of the Moral Majority and Religious Right, as if those philosophies of engagement are currently dominating American Christianity. They rarely seem to realize or acknowledge that the prominence of Falwell and Robertson and televangelist Right peaked 30 years ago and was basically kaput by the new millennium. For the last two decades, public leadership of American Christianity has been dominated by people who look, act and sound more like Mr. Rogers than Mr T.

Thus far the prescription hasn't worked. The retreat of the Bible-thumping televangelists from the main stage didn't put a stop to the string of culture war defeats. To the contrary, the cultural losses mounted, and eventually broke out into a political rout. In twenty years, the battleground shifted from a fight for control of the major cultural organs to a rearguard action for freedom from political persecution.

Cooke and his fellows could counter that the prescription hasn't yet been fully applied, that we're still suffering from the aftereffects of the previous regime. But no amount of time will make a prescription work if they are working from a faulty diagnosis. The prevailing assumption among self-deprecating Christians like Cooke is that the enemy is us. What if that's wrong?

What if it wasn't Christians that blew up their credibility? This is not to say that Christian error played no part in their many defeats, but that a strictly self-critical approach leaves a huge factor out of the equation. It's always a great goal to lose 10 lbs of fat through a vigorous nutrition and exercise regimen, but what's that gonna do about the malignant tumor that's taking over your body?

The enemy isn't always us. The defeats weren't purely self-inflicted. And, most relevant to Cooke's general argument, strengthening the local church isn't likely to get our credibility back if that's not how we lost it in the first place.

Who then is the enemy and what should we do about it? I'll tackle that next.