Church-and-World sets up the primary language for the Church’s mission in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) today. The Church calls people out of the world to be saved or reconciled, then sends them back into the world, whether for mission-evangelism or mission-social action or both. The language and theology belong to the era of Modernism-Pietism (1650-1950/present), which, by all accounts, is giving way to another era. This essay explores the insights that made Church-and-World successful and the issues yet to be resolved. The essay also points to efforts by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the 20th century to move beyond Pietism (and Modernism).
I
The dichotomy of Church-and-World arises specifically from the Pietist concern for salvation. The Church is the place of the saved while the World is the place of the unsaved-but-potentially-saved. The mission of the Church, accordingly, is to reach out to the World and bring about the conversion or transformation of people, so that they too can belong to the ranks of the saved. As a community of the people who are saved, the Church is to reflect in its own life the same transformation it seeks to impart to the World.
More particularly, Pietism focuses on the inner self and the experiences of the self in relationships with God, with other people, and with nature. To be saved, or reconciled, is to get those relationships right both individually and collectively. Christ dwelling in the heart by faith is the God-given means by which the self is transformed from within, first in relation to God and then in all other relationships.
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) is, in my opinion, the watershed Reformed theologian of Pietism. He transposed the Reformation and Orthodox theology of the 16th-18th centuries into the categories of Pietism. The Christian faith, he says, is “the feeling of absolute dependence.” This feeling is more basic than doctrine (thinking) or ethics (doing) but infuses both of these and makes them authentically Christian. The feeling cannot be self-generated without losing its absolute dependence upon God, from Whom it comes as a gift. As such the feeling is less an emotion than an orientation to God. In Jesus Christ, the “feeling of absolute dependence” is made available to humankind. The Church or society of Christians joined with him exists to introduce other people to Christ.
Other Reformed figures helped usher in the era of Pietism. Pastor-theologian Jonathan Edwards helped start the Great Awakening in the American colonies (1740 and after). So did the great preacher John Whitefield, who worked in America and alongside John Wesley in Britain. The brothers Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine were important 18th century revivalists in Scotland. In the 19th — 20th centuries, Pietism became more individualistic (the inner self of each person), experiential (emotional revivals), and Arminian (emphasis on free will). Pietism also spawned communitarian movements, including the Moravian communities in Germany and America (which so deeply influenced Wesley and Schleiermacher) and extensive social experiments.
Pietism is one of the most successful eras of the Christian Church. In percentage and raw numbers the 19th Century saw the greatest expansion of Christianity since the first century (Latourette). New fields such as psychology and psychiatry arose to explore the inner self. The same focus brought out the twin emphases on individual rights-and-capabilities and the corporation as a legal person. With the relational concerns of Pietism came a historical consciousness that values historical context and community dynamics (sociology). Relational thinking is also essential to macro-economics (modern capitalism), Einstein’s theory of relativity (the atomic bomb/nuclear energy), the field theories of quantum physics (advanced technology), and the inter-connectedness of everything (personal relationships, social systems, international affairs, the far reaches of the universe). The Church’s functional role in God’s mission to the World modeled the utilitarian concern for all things useful, effective, and efficient. The perennial advice — in novels, sitcoms, dramas, and movies — to follow your heart or let your conscience be your guide or go with your gut, reflects the Pietist mindset, too. Pietist transformation pervades modern, Western culture!
In his book, Christ and Culture (1951), H. Richard Niebuhr brilliantly describes five different ways Christians have historically worked out the impact of the Gospel upon culture — the Church upon the World — in the era of Modernism-Pietism. From the Medieval/Reformation era comes Christ-above-culture (Roman Catholic), from the Reformation era comes Christ-and-culture-in-paradox (Lutheran) and Christ-transforming-culture (Reformed/Calvinist). Distinctive to the Modernist-Pietist era are Christ-and-or-of-culture (accommodationist, liberal) and Christ-against-culture (anti-cultural, conservative). Niebuhr’s stated preference is for the Reformed position. While all five ways have made important contributions, the transformation position has been the engine for the Modernist era.
II
The very success of Christian Pietism jeopardizes its future. Church-and-World suggests a certain dualism, in which each term defines itself in its opposition to the other. If Church is the saved people of God, then the World is, simply, people who are unsaved. Beyond that difference the lines begin to blur. Outside of and other than the Church, what is the World, really? The societal, historical, cultural milieu that always surrounds the Church? The realm of evil, unregulated, and at odds with God? The created universe? Isn’t the Church also part of the World in all these senses? Indeed, is everyone in the Church saved and everyone in the World unsaved?
Nevertheless, the era has gone by, the distinction between Church and World has become more sharply drawn. In some circles the Church is the place of God, a foretaste of heaven, and/or a provisional demonstration of what God intends for all humanity. By contrast, the World is the place of evil, injustice, constant temptations, and repeated falls from grace. In the name of the transforming salvation of sinners, the Church has increasingly distanced itself from its sister theme, creation, now widely regarded as a morally neutral ground for the battle between saints and sinners, God and the Devil. The Church often presents itself as an escape from the harsh realities of life, as a place of feeling instead of thinking or doing, as a realm of private opinion that can disregard the hard facts of natural science, as pertaining to one’s future destiny with no particular relevance to one’s natural life in the present.
The biggest danger is that the Pietist distinction between Church and World may actually point to a place — the World — where God is not sovereign and Christ is not Lord. The World in that sense is the very definition of the secular, and the increasing secularism of the Christian West is no accident. For 350 years or so Pietism has given status to the very thing it has named and opposed as its enemy. As a place separate from God, the World has no binding connection to God unless the Church makes it so. Whether, or how, we connect Church and World becomes a matter of the human will to connect them.
The vigor and success of the Church during the era of Modernism-Pietism is undeniable. The Church took seriously its mission to bridge the gap between Church and World. Earlier in the era Christians understood mission mainly to be our participating in what God does to save people, transform societies, and bring history to its God-appointed ends. In late Modernism-Pietism, however, the emphasis shifted from the mission of God to the human instruments of mission, God embodied in and working through Christians/the Church to transform the World.
The instrumentalist role invites large (imperialistic?) claims for the Church: the saved of the Church are the appointed means of God for transforming (ruling?) the World, i.e., converting the unsaved, regulating society and culture, and bending nature to serve humankind. The Church’s expansion in fact coincides with the 19th century Western drive to develop colonial empires and subdue nature to human purposes. Acting out these impulses puts the Church on the World’s turf, which the World understands and recognizes as one of its own.
Now broadly rooted in a morally neutral (sinless) nature, the World that the Church successfully defined over against itself, has taken on a life of its own. With incredible scientific, medical, financial, military, and other technological accomplishments, the modern World has become truly inter-personal, inter-national, and inter-galactic in its reach, power, and scale. Increasingly self-sufficient, the modern World no longer needs the Church that made it, nor a fix-it god to make up for human shortfalls (Bonhoeffer).
III
The Protestant Reformers of the 16th century had to overcome a similar dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. The Reformers broke through this dichotomy in two ways. First, they said that with the fall of humanity all creation was infected by sin. Grace, the saving work of Jesus Christ, has to free all creation from the grip of sin, and in Christ God defeats sin-evil-and-death and re-creates the universe (I Cor. 15!). So, Martin Luther left the monastery, elevated marriage-and-secular-work to a Christian vocation, and proclaimed the Gospel to a sinful creation.
Second, Jesus Christ alone is Lord over all creation, history (providence!), and life. For John Calvin sinful humans united with Jesus Christ become disciples who seek and follow Christ in all of life. In the power of the Spirit they hear Christ’s voice in worship (Word and Sacrament) and they meet Christ providentially at every moment of time.
In the 20th century, borrowing from the Reformation, the theologians Karl Barth (1886-1968) and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) broke through the Church-and-World dichotomy of Pietism. God is God, says Barth, “wholly other” from any creature. God transcends all that God has made, whether Church or World. The Church is thus closer to the World than either Church or World is close to God, which pushes the two together. The Church now has to recognize its own sinfulness alongside the World’s, and discern in God’s creating/re-creating activity with the World the point of its own life. However, the Church’s confession, “Jesus is Lord,” cannot be imperialistic, for the almighty power and forgiving love of God come together at the point of Jesus on the cross and life in fellowship with the risen Christ.
Likewise, Bonhoeffer pondered throughout his ministry: What is the concrete reality and command of God at any given moment? Bonhoeffer was certain that Jesus Christ is the reality of God-with-us (Emanuel), and that at worship (Word and Sacraments) and as a community (priesthood of believers), the Church hears the voice of Christ speaking clearly. Above all, he said, only in Christ do we belong to God and one another. Consigned to the bowels of a Nazi prison during WW II, Bonhoeffer was totally cut off from the Christian community. Was he also cut off from Christ? To be in Christ then and there forced Bonhoeffer to ask whether Christ could be at the center of the World as much as Christ is at the center of the Church. A “fix-it” god wouldn’t do. But in Christ didn’t God lovingly and powerfully reconcile the World to Godself, the sinful, self-sufficient World in which we live? In Christ doesn’t God embrace the World and reconcile Church and World to each other as well as to the reality of God? According to the report of his execution by hanging, in Christ Bonhoeffer walked confidently with God to the end.
The dichotomy of Church and World is collapsing of its own weight. That reality affects all of us in the PC(USA) — right, left, or middle — and will simply bypass us if we ignore it. Maybe the time has come for the PC(USA) to reaffirm the simple Gospel centered in Jesus Christ and to key the Church’s mission for the next era to the humble Lordship of Christ over all of life.
Merwyn S. Johnson is currently Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology Emeritus at Erskine Theological Seminary, Due West, S.C., and Visiting Professor of Theology at Union-PSCE in Charlotte, N.C.
